Internal SpaceX documents show impressive stock deals offered to investors like a16z and Gigafund
Like many highly valued startups, SpaceX It is allowed sometimes Employees exchange some of their shares by selling For external investors accredited by the company.
TechCrunch got a sneak peek inside SpaceX Document about this tender offer as of May 2022. Musk Published on X Last month, SpaceX held such sales for employees approximately every 6 months.
These documents provide interesting information about the investors authorized to purchase these secondary shares, and the good deals they are getting.
In this offering, investors paid $70 per share to employees, the document shows. This is a massive bargain compared to the stock prices investors pay when investing in seed rounds – where the company sells shares directly to raise capital.
During the initial sale in 2022, shares were worth $270. (The documents say SpaceX has not sold shares in a seed round at $70 since its Series G sold at $77.46 per share. That was in 2015, according to PitchBook.)
Of course, the main reason for the giant price reduction is… That employees own common shares Investors who buy in seed rounds typically buy preferred stock that entitles them to dividends and liquidation preferences. They are the first to get their money back if the company sells itself.
In fact, this document reveals that as of 2022, if SpaceX sells itself, the first $6.67 billion will be owed to preferred shareholders. Since then, the company has soared Another $750 millionso this amount paid to first-time investors will likely be increased by at least this amount. Should SpaceX actually control its current astronomical valuation? 350 billion dollarsthese liquidation preferences – paying investors first – will not present a problem for employees or other shareholders of common stock. But if the company one day decides to sell for less than $7 billion, common shareholders won’t get anything.
Regarding dividends, as of late 2019, internal documents seen by TechCrunch stated that SpaceX had never paid any dividends. But if its board wants to declare dividends, they will be paid in fixed amounts based on when investors buy the shares. These amounts range from a few pennies per share for stocks purchased in the earlier, cheaper rounds, to more than $10 per share for those purchased in the later, more expensive rounds.
For employees, the news regarding their shares in 2022 has been particularly good. In February 2022, SpaceX split its Class A, Class B, and Class C common stock 10 for 1. The preferred stock was not split. The documents do not explain the differences between the different classes of common stock. In public companies, different classes often have different voting rights. For example, one class of stock held by a founder may have 10 votes per share, allowing the founders to retain control of their companies while selling stock and cashing out.
In this case, it’s not clear when SpaceX will go public, if ever. Secondary sales like this remain one of the only ways employees have to sell their shares.
Other good news for employees in this sale is that the stock price of $70 was an improvement over the previous bid of $56 when the stock split was adjusted, Bloomberg reported at the time. and Bloomberg also reported last month that the next bid could reach $108 to $110 apiece.
Which investors should buy?
One of the most interesting revelations in these documents was that only a few investors were named as accredited buyers. Most of them were within SpaceX’s orbit, so to speak, meaning the investors were either vocal supporters of SpaceX founder Elon Musk or had other historically close ties.
She was:
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) purchased approximately 4.3 million shares for approximately $300 million. Interestingly, a16z is not a long-time, historically major investor in SpaceX but has managed to hit its cap schedule significantly in the company. Raised $250 million in August 2022 According to Pitchbook. It also became a lead investor in SpaceX’s $750 million round, at a valuation of $137 billion in 2023. CNBC reported.
The company’s co-founder, Marc Andreessen, knew Musk through the decades he managed in the same circles as Silicon Valley’s tech billionaires. In the past few years, he’s become a champion of Musk, expressing his admiration for the SpaceX, Tesla, and X CEO in all sorts of ways, starting with How Musk uses his money to continue launching startups To applaud Musk’s persistence. Andreessen even publicly debated billionaire and rival VC Vinod Khosla (OpenAI supporter) over X (owned by Musk) after Khosla praised OpenAI Shortly after Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI. The discussion caught Musk’s attention.
Alia Capital Partners It is linked to the Aliya Growth Fund, which has been authorized to buy just over 1.4 million shares for approximately $100 million. Alia is a family office for wealthy people in Miami He says SpaceX is one of its largest holdings. Aliya — which has stakes in several prized startups like Figure AI, Impossible Foods, and Anduril — remarkably netted $360 million when Musk bought Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion. Reuters reported. Even after Musk immediately cut Twitter’s headcount, and His management style caused others (and advertisers) to flee.Alia remained publicly optimistic. “We believe Twitter will achieve a 4-5x return in just a few years, with relatively limited downside risk,” Alia CEO Ross Kestin told Reuters in December 2022.
Alia also happily defends SpaceX. In April, around that time Bloomberg reported that its Starlink satellite The business still burns more money than it generates, Alia Go to LinkedIn To double the visibility of musk. She posted: “Recent reports indicate a staggering 500,000 new Starlink subscribers in the past four months – a feat that is far from a coincidence – and more than 2.7 million in total. It serves as a testament to deep vision matched by flawless execution.
Gigafundwhose co-founder is a member of SpaceX’s board of directors, was allotted more than 1.4 million shares at a cost of approximately $100 million. Gigafund was founded by fellow PayPal mafia member Luke Nosek who joined forces with Peter Thiel when he founded Founders Fund. Thiel and Musk, of course, are members of the PayPal mafia. At Founders Fund, Nosek led the first venture capital investment in Space He left Founders Fund in 2017 to launch Gigafund. Gigafund co-founder Stephen Oskoe is also a former Founders Fund investor and has led the company to deals with Musk’s other companies, including Neuralink and The Boring Company.
137 projects It is linked to 137 Holdings, which has been authorized to buy just under 1.1 million shares at a cost of approximately $75 million. 137 Ventures is an interesting venture capital fund because Their accrual of goodwill is these types of secondary purchases. Founders Justin Fechner-Wolfson and Alex Jacobson met while at Founders Fund, where they were working on investing in SpaceX. When Musk originally lobbied Thiel and Founders Fund to back his then-new rocket company, the original investment in SpaceX was about $5 million until Fechner and Wolfson called for it to be much larger. The Founders Fund ended up writing a check for about 20% of its fund It continued to take large positions in other SpaceX rounds from other funds, Fechner-Wolfson told TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos in 2020. It launched 137 projects in 2011.
Point 2 Proof of investment One million shares were allotted at a cost of $70 million. Point 2 Prove looks like a special purpose vehicle led by a secretive global investment firm In CapitalAccording to Securities and Exchange Commission Form D As of July 2022. Vy was founded by Alexander Tamas, who spent his formative years at Yuri Milner’s DST. Although Tamas doesn’t say much publicly, and is therefore not an outspoken supporter of Musk, his company has pledged $700 million to buy Musk out of Twitter. Bloomberg reported at the time. Vy also owns a stake in SpaceX and has invested in a number of other Musk companies such as Boring and Neuralink. A Prospectus The Vy Fund asserts that Tamas was the investor who secured DST its early stakes in companies such as Facebook, Airbnb, Spotify, Twitter, Alibaba and others. Marc Andreessen and venture capital firm co-founder Ben Horowitz once described Tamas to Bloomberg: “He’s on speed dial with everyone trying to build the most successful, highest-scale global Internet companies today.”
Atreides administration It is linked to the Atreides Special Circumstances Fund, which has been allocated approximately 429,000 shares at a cost of approximately $30 million. Boston-based hedge fund Atreides founder Gavin Baker is returning to SpaceX. Before founding Atreides in January 2019, Gavin spent 18 years at Fidelity, rising to manage the $17 billion Fidelity OTC fund. says their website. He made his first investment in SpaceX while at Fidelity, and in 2022, SpaceX was Atreides’ largest position among the venture capital portion of her fund, Bloomberg reported. (Atreides had $3 billion in assets under management that year, but currently has about $4 billion in assets under management, according to Recent SEC filing.) The fund has also owned a large stake in Tesla since 2019. Baker is a public supporter of Musk. Only this month He wrote a long post on X Invitation to Tesla’s $56 billion pay package returned to Musk And he supported Musk’s desire to move Tesla’s founding to Texas.
TCP Exploration Fund 2022 More than 357,000 shares worth approximately $25 million were allotted. This is a fund associated with Los Angeles Troy Capital Partners Founded by MySpace founder Josh Berman, According to SEC Form D. However, by Multiple accountsTroy’s managing partner, Anthony Tucker, is responsible for Troy’s SpaceX investment. Troy has been a backer since SpaceX’s Series J round in 2019, which valued the company at about $28 billion after money, according to PitchBook. Troy, who focuses on Los Angeles-based companies (although not limited to them), was also an investor in the now-defunct Hyperloop One, which hoped to build rapid underground transportation between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Angeles based on Musk’s idea.
In addition, the SpaceX sale also allowed two other investors to buy another roughly 50 million shares combined as well, although the paperwork was so thin for both that we couldn’t determine their connection to Musk.
SpaceX and all of the funds did not respond to multiple requests for comment except for Atreides, which declined to comment.
Update: This story was originally published on June 19, 2024, and was updated on January 1, 2025 to include SpaceX’s latest assessment.
