30 investors can't lose: The firms that bet on SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic all at once

The SpaceX facility and Starship rocket at Starbase in Texas. [Reuters]

As SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic gear up for what could be a three-way initial public offering race this year, at least 30 investors are positioned to win no matter which company crosses the finish line first — having broken the venture capital industry's unwritten rule against backing direct competitors by placing bets on all three.

More than 700 investors hold stakes in SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Of those, more than 40 have been identified as family offices — investment vehicles built on the fortunes of individual families.

Among those invested in SpaceX, which is first in line for an IPO, are Tridentum House, a family office founded by the Kadisha family — early backers of Qualcomm — and Quasar, a Chicago-based investment firm established by Alec Litowitz, founder of hedge fund Magnetar.

The logo of Claude Mythos, developed by Anthropic. [Getty Images]

Established venture firms have largely split their bets between SpaceX and OpenAI. Andreessen Horowitz and Tribe Capital, led by Joshua Kushner, have invested in both. Andreessen Horowitz — widely known in the industry as a16z, a shorthand derived from the 16 letters between the "a" and "z" in "Andreessen" — was co-founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen, who created the Netscape web browser, and Ben Horowitz, who previously founded cloud software company Opsware. Tribe Capital is a New York-based venture firm founded by Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law. Despite being based outside Silicon Valley, Tribe built its reputation by identifying high-potential tech startups including Spotify, Slack and GitHub.

Before SpaceX's IPO, all three companies were routinely described as the most valuable private companies in the world, drawing such intense market attention that even the long-standing industry norm against investing in rivals simultaneously gave way. Amazon and Nvidia have each committed tens of billions of dollars to both Anthropic and OpenAI. According to the Journal, Amazon has invested $33 billion in the two companies to date.

The opening screen of ChatGPT, the AI model developed by OpenAI. [Getty Images]

The surest winners in this three-way IPO race are those who backed all three companies. According to private market research firm PitchBook, more than 30 investors — including Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital and Ark Ventures — hold stakes in all three.

Founders Fund was established by Peter Thiel, a PayPal co-founder who went on to become a serial entrepreneur and investor and is known in Silicon Valley circles as part of the "PayPal Mafia." Sequoia Capital, the oldest and largest venture firm in Silicon Valley, has also been central to the AI investment wave — it was an early backer of Apple and Google, began investing in OpenAI before ChatGPT launched in 2022, and joined SpaceX as an early investor as well. Ark Ventures, led by Cathie Wood, rounded out its AI exposure by entering all three companies as a late-stage investor.

Several family offices also hold stakes in all three. Lakeside Capital is a private investment firm founded by Trevor Paladino, a Tampa, Florida entrepreneur who built his fortune in sporting goods. BFA Global Investors secured positions in all three by investing in US private companies on behalf of family office clients in Australia and Asia.

Among traditional asset managers and hedge funds, T. Rowe Price Group has invested in all three across multiple funding rounds; some of its mutual funds also hold OpenAI shares. Coatue Management, the $70 billion investment firm led by Philippe Laffont, has likewise backed all three. Coatue is known for making large concentrated bets on technology stocks and startups.

kate01@heraldcorp.com