Antonio Gracias is suddenly at the center of one of the biggest private-market fortune swings in years. SpaceX set a $135 share price for its initial public offering on June 3, a level that would value the company at $1.8 trillion and leave Gracias’s 7.2% stake worth roughly $90 billion.
That is the number drawing attention now because SpaceX could begin trading on the Nasdaq on June 12, turning a long-held private bet into a public market event with record-setting scale. If the offering goes forward at that price, Elon Musk would keep control of the company and his own 50% stake would be worth $752 billion, but the windfall for Gracias is the more startling new figure for a name that rarely sits this close to the spotlight.
Gracias is not just any investor on the cap table. He founded Valor Equity Partners in 1995, and the firm now manages $17.5 billion in assets. He extended a $1 million personal loan to SpaceX in 2008, when the company was struggling financially, joined the SpaceX board that same year and remains a SpaceX executive. Valor controls the second-largest stake in SpaceX after Musk’s, and the same firm has backed Tesla, Solar City, the Boring Company and Neuralink. Fortune reported that Gracias and Valor’s SpaceX holdings could be worth about $90 billion if the IPO lands at the announced valuation.
The relationship goes well beyond business. Gracias and Musk have spent Christmases together and taken joint vacations in Hawaii and Wyoming, and in January 2025 Gracias wrote on X that he had worked closely with Musk for more than 20 years and that his heart was pure. Musk returned the favor in a 2012 speech at the Economic Club of Chicago, saying the company would not have made it without Gracias’s help. That closeness matters because it sits alongside a cleaner corporate fact: Gracias served on Tesla’s board from 2008 through 2021, then left after a shakeup that reduced the number of board seats.
The size of the potential payout is what makes this moment different. SpaceX is involved in supplying lunar equipment for astronauts expected to return to the moon sometime in 2028, owns xAI and Starlink, and would become the biggest IPO in stock market history if this offering proceeds as planned. What remains unresolved is whether SpaceX actually completes the listing on June 12 — the price is set, the valuation is fixed, and Gracias’s paper fortune is already in view.
