Antonio Gracias backed Elon Musk’s SpaceX during a financial crisis with a $1 million personal loan. Years later, Valor Equity Partners’ 7.2% stake—set to trade as the company launches its IPO—could be worth around $90 billion, pushing Gracias toward the ranks
When SpaceX nearly imploded, Antonio Gracias didn’t wait for the market to decide. He wrote a $1 million personal loan—an act rooted in a long-running alliance with Elon Musk—and he moved closer to the center of Musk’s most visible gamble.
Now. with SpaceX setting a $135 share price for its initial public offering on June 3. the price tag on that early conviction could swell into something almost unbelievable. The IPO would value the company at $1.8 trillion and. as the deal heads to the Nasdaq on June 12. it could become the biggest IPO in stock market history. Musk is set to maintain control after the IPO.
For Gracias, the stakes are personal in more ways than one. Valor Equity Partners, the firm he founded in 1995, controls a 7.2% stake in SpaceX—the second-largest stake after Musk’s own. If the math plays out as projected. Fortune reported that Gracias and Valor’s SpaceX holdings could be worth roughly $90 billion. That would put the investor—whose net worth is described as $4.3 billion—on a fast track to being one of the world’s richest men. built on a bet made years earlier when the company’s future looked anything but certain.
SpaceX’s operations are tightly tied to the launches that made Musk a household name: rockets and satellites. plus involvement in supplying lunar equipment for astronauts to return to the moon sometime in 2028. The company also owns the artificial intelligence start-up xAI and the satellite internet service Starlink. As markets look toward June 12. investors aren’t just valuing rockets—they’re pricing an entire cluster of Musk-linked businesses that have continued to expand.
The connection between Gracias and Musk stretches far beyond finance. The Wall Street Journal reported that the pair are close friends. having spent Christmases together and taken joint vacations in Hawaii and Wyoming. On X in January 2025. Gracias wrote. “I have worked closely with Elon for over 20 years.” He added. “His heart is pure. and his sole mission is to help humanity.”.
It was in 2008—when SpaceX struggled financially—that Gracias’s loyalty became overt action. He extended that $1 million personal loan to Musk’s SpaceX. He joined the board that year and remains a SpaceX executive.
Valor’s portfolio also leans heavily into Musk’s broader orbit. Through Valor. Gracias has invested into Tesla. Solar City. the Boring Company. and Neuralink—moves that have helped Musk build an expansive business empire. Those positions have long been part of the story of how one investor’s conviction can turn into long-term wealth.
At Tesla, Gracias’s role was more than passive. He was an early institutional investor in the automaker. joining Tesla’s board in 2008 and leaving after a corporate shakeup that slashed the number of board seats. He engineered cost-saving initiatives. including deploying Tesla salespeople to carry out test-drives for vehicles at public events rather than building out a fleet of showrooms. Musk later credited Gracias with rescuing Tesla when production costs for the company’s first car swelled past budget projections early in its existence. In a 2012 speech at the Economic Club of Chicago. Musk said. “I don’t think we would have made it without his help.”.
That pattern—support during pressure—also followed Musk into government. Last year. Gracias followed Musk into the Trump administration as the SpaceX founder was setting up the Department of Government Efficiency. aimed at sharply reducing public-sector ranks. Gracias joined DOGE as a volunteer to comb through Social Security Administration records searching for evidence of widespread voter fraud. He never found it, and his stint in government was short-lived.
DOGE’s effort did not come without fallout. NBC News reported that Gracias exited DOGE in July 2025. The same reporting described DOGE’s existence as marred by chaotic firings in government agencies, court battles, and failure to achieve its $1 trillion cost-cutting goal.
Even without leaving the numbers to do all the talking. the sequence feels hard to miss: a $1 million loan in 2008. a large stake that has quietly sat inside a portfolio built for Musk-linked growth. and now an IPO priced at $135 per share—scheduled to begin trading on June 12—at a valuation that could vault SpaceX into record territory.
For SpaceX, the IPO is a turning point. For Antonio Gracias, it’s the moment a long-backed position could finally cash out at a scale that redefines what a single bet can become.
SpaceX IPO Antonio Gracias Valor Equity Partners Elon Musk 7.2% stake $135 share price June 12 trading Starlink xAI Tesla investments DOGE