“I have worked closely with Elon for over 20 years,” Antonio Gracias wrote on X in January 2025, adding that “his heart is pure, and his sole mission is to help humanity.” The post read like the note of a longtime ally hours after SpaceX set an IPO price that suddenly makes those words a financial headline.
On June 3 SpaceX set a $135 share price for its initial public offering, a figure that valuates the company at $1.8 trillion. That pricing turns Valor Equity Partners’ 7.2% holding in SpaceX into a paper stake worth roughly $90 billion, a figure widely reported after the pricing; the 7.2% stake is the second-largest after Elon Musk’s own position. SpaceX is scheduled to begin trading on the Nasdaq on June 12, a date that will test how much of that paper value can actually be realized.
Gracias’s connection to Musk and SpaceX is old and personal. He founded Valor Equity Partners in 1995 and remains a SpaceX executive after joining the board in 2008. He lent the company $1 million in 2008 when it was struggling financially — an act Musk later summarized in a 2012 speech, saying, “I don’t think we would have made it without his help.” Gracias was also an early institutional investor in Tesla and served on Tesla’s board from 2008 through 2021.
Valor manages $17.5 billion in assets, and the firm’s control of the 7.2% stake is the vehicle for the headline number. The scale of the paper gain is almost inconceivable compared with a routinely reported net worth for Gracias of $4.3 billion, producing a striking tension: a long-standing backer who once lent $1 million now stands on the ledger as the owner of a stake that could be worth roughly $90 billion if the IPO valuation holds.
That gap — between headline paper value and a reported $4.3 billion net worth — is the story’s friction. The $90 billion is an estimate tied to the $135-per-share pricing and the $1.8 trillion valuation; it does not mean $90 billion in cash will move into Gracias’s accounts on June 12. Musk will maintain control of SpaceX after the IPO, and how shareholders, executives and large holders convert paper value into tradable gains depends on the details that govern a public listing, shareholder agreements and actual market activity once trading begins.
Personal ties deepen the picture. Gracias and Musk have spent Christmases together and taken vacations in Hawaii and Wyoming, details that underline why Gracias has been more than a distant financier. He remains closely associated with Musk’s network of companies, and his public declarations about their relationship have been as much a part of his profile as the investments themselves.
The next act is straightforward on the calendar but far less certain in outcome. SpaceX shares start trading on Nasdaq on June 12; that session will set public prices and begin the process by which private stakes are tested in the open market. The single most consequential unanswered question from today’s valuation is how much of that roughly $90 billion estimate will be realizable — for Gracias, for Valor, and for other pre-IPO holders — once the shares trade and investors set the market price under public conditions.
For now, Gracias stands at an unusual crossroads: an early, hands-on supporter who once advanced $1 million to keep a company afloat now watches a paper fortune multiply to numbers that could rank among the richest on record. Whether that paper becomes spendable wealth will be decided not in a press release but on the Nasdaq trading floor beginning June 12.
