Tomales Bay – As SpaceX’s IPO made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, newly unsealed investor records from a Delaware dispute show that some stakes in the still-private rocket company were acquired through U.S. middlemen by investors tied to mainland China, Hong Kong
The last week has looked like a victory lap for SpaceX. The company priced its initial public offering last week, a milestone that was described as the largest IPO ever and a moment that made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
But behind the IPO’s headlines, investors who bought into SpaceX while it was still private—and the intermediaries who helped them do it—are now drawing intense attention from U.S. national security officials.
The new details come from a private investor list obtained by ProPublica. unsealed in connection with a corporate dispute in Delaware. The records describe a particularly delicate question for SpaceX: which people in countries like China bought into the company. and how. SpaceX’s business grew from sensitive U.S. government work. including making spy satellites for the Pentagon—work that sits squarely in the zone where regulators worry about foreign access.
There is no ban on Chinese investment in U.S. military contractors, but such investment is heavily regulated. And in a sign of how sensitive the company and regulators view the issue. SpaceX barred investors from China and Hong Kong from buying shares in its initial public offering last week. citing “regulatory and compliance risks.”.
The U.S. government alleges that China has a strategy of using investments in sensitive industries for espionage and to gain access to cutting-edge technology.
On paper. the investor list from the Delaware case shows stakes that are far smaller than the amounts that made SpaceX’s valuation explode. The documents say the investments ranged from $800,000 to $40 million. They were made between 2018 and 2021. and the records describe at least a dozen investors with addresses in mainland China. Hong Kong. or Russia who acquired stakes in SpaceX years earlier through a middleman firm in the U.S. called Tomales Bay Capital.
One of those investments came from an entity owned by David Su, the co-founder of Beijing venture capital firm MPCi. According to the investor list, the Su entity invested $15 million in a SpaceX fund in 2020.
Su’s connection to space money does not stop at SpaceX. The same record notes that his firm has been a high-profile backer of some of SpaceX’s Chinese competitors. It points to two satellite companies that Su’s firm invested in that were sanctioned by the U.S. government for allegedly assisting the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary organization.
One of the companies sanctioned in connection with Wagner was sanctioned again last month for allegedly helping Iran attack U.S. military forces during the war.
For the U.S. government. even without any proof that Su personally did something improper. the question is whether investors based in China could get nonpublic information about SpaceX’s technology or strategies. Sarah Bauerle Danzman. an Indiana University professor who has worked for the State Department scrutinizing foreign investments. put the concern directly: “If an investor has conflicts of interests with other companies in China — if they could feed that information to competitors — it could be a national security concern.”.
MPCi disputed any suggestion of improper access. In a statement. MPCi said that Su “has not received any nonpublic information of SpaceX.” The statement described Su as “a Singapore citizen who resides in Singapore. ” and added: “MPCi is a brand name with different teams and funds. Mr. Su is responsible for the US dollar funds.”.
The documents also describe how Su has spent significant time in China. A 2024 profile says Su “spent almost 100 per cent of his time in China over the last 20 years.”
Tomales Bay Capital and the people running it have likewise pushed back. A lawyer for Tomales Bay Capital said in a statement that the firm “has not provided any non-public. sensitive information regarding SpaceX to investors.” The lawyer said the investors were passive limited partners. and that “Aside from fund financials that include quarterly valuations. Tomales Bay’s investors have not received any further information regarding SpaceX.”.
The lawyer. Ryan Stonerock. said: “The vast majority. if not all. of the investors included on the unsealed Tomales Bay investor list are not citizens of any foreign adversary. including Russia or China. ” and added that “certainly none of them are agents of Russia or China. or any other foreign adversary.” He also said that some investors “may have mailing addresses listed” in Russia or China but do not actually live there. saying they are “in fact citizens and residents of the United States or other countries that are not foreign adversaries.”.
SpaceX did not respond to questions.
One of the Chinese space companies sanctioned by the U.S. government, Spacety, previously denied providing support to the Wagner Group.
The records show the people identified by ProPublica who were located in China or Russia appeared to be “either wealthy businesspeople or their children.” But the ledger does not always make it easy to trace ownership to a single human being. It includes shell companies whose ultimate owners remain hidden.
Some names on the Kahlon ledger are easy to identify. including the Indian politician Abhishek Singhvi. Betsy DeVos. the former U.S. secretary of education, and a British Virgin Islands company owned by Indonesian billionaires. Other stakes appear to be routed through entities where the money trail is murkier.
One example is a Delaware LLC called HAL9001 Partners Fund I, which invested roughly $10 million in a SpaceX fund in 2020. The incorporation documents for HAL9001 were signed by the venture capitalist Roman Sobachevskiy.
The Treasury Department recently fined a company co-owned by Sobachevskiy hundreds of millions of dollars for managing a different investment on behalf of a sanctioned Russian oligarch. Sobachevskiy has not been personally accused of wrongdoing. A Tomales Bay Capital spokesperson said the oligarch “had no involvement with the investment.” Sobachevskiy did not respond to questions. including who put up the money for the SpaceX investment.
There are also documents describing connections to Qatar.
Funds affiliated with Bracket Capital—an investment firm with offices in Los Angeles. London and Qatar—invested about $48 million through a series of deals from 2017 through 2020. the documents show. Bracket has money from the Qatari royal family, according to an email that Kahlon sent to SpaceX’s CFO. The ledger also lists Doha. Qatar. as the address for a mysterious entity called AM FIG Cayman Limited. which invested around $10 million in 2020.
The documents do not specify whether the Bracket investments were made on behalf of the royal family or some other client.
In 2021. as Kahlon was soliciting backers for yet another SpaceX deal. he texted a Bracket employee: “At the end we can just send Yalda to talk to big guy. We need a bail out lol.” The records identify Yalda Aoukar as Bracket’s co-founder. It is unclear whether the “big guy” refers to a member of the royal family and what Kahlon meant by “a bail out.”.
Bracket did not respond to requests for comment.
The central mechanism connecting many of these names to SpaceX is Tomales Bay Capital, run by an investor named Iqbaljit Kahlon. Kahlon, the documents say, has long been close to SpaceX’s leadership and has even been involved in the company’s operations.
SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen, who has worked there for 15 years, testified in the Delaware dispute that Kahlon “has been with the company in one form or fashion longer than I have.”
Before SpaceX went public, Kahlon reportedly made a fortune by acting as a middleman for investors seeking to add the rocket company to their portfolio. His firm regularly bought SpaceX stock, packaged it into investment funds, and charged fees to investors who bought pieces of those funds.
In a 2021 pitch to a potential investor in China, Kahlon promised special access to SpaceX, including quarterly updates on the company’s business development, “visits to SpaceX, and the opportunities to interview with Space X’s CFO,” according to meeting minutes that later appeared in court records.
SpaceX and other outlets have previously reported on the existence of Chinese investors in SpaceX. but the identities of most investors were closely guarded. The Kahlon investor list adds hundreds of names to the public picture of who owns SpaceX. The list details investments in several Tomales Bay Capital funds that acquired SpaceX stock. and it is possible that some of those funds own stakes in other companies too.
As for why these records are only now reaching public view, the timeline inside Delaware matters. The new documents come from a corporate dispute in Delaware involving Tomales Bay Capital. Court records were unsealed this month after ProPublica moved to make them public. with the help of attorneys from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the law firm Shaw Keller.
Tomales Bay Capital appealed to the Delaware Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of ProPublica.
Taken together. the filings lay bare the contradiction SpaceX faces in the public imagination: the company barred Chinese and Hong Kong investors from its IPO last week due to “regulatory and compliance risks. ” while the investor list from years earlier describes middleman-facilitated stakes tied to mainland China. Hong Kong. Russia. and Qatar. The investments were small percentages of SpaceX. but the underlying value of the company that those investors bought into has grown dramatically.
The company’s valuation has exploded from $33.3 billion in 2019 to $2.7 trillion as of Wednesday morning.
Last year, ProPublica reported on SpaceX’s unusual approach to accepting money from Chinese investors. According to testimony from the Delaware case, SpaceX allowed Chinese investors to buy stakes in SpaceX so long as the money was routed through the Cayman Islands or other offshore secrecy hubs.
There is no evidence in the newly unsealed material that any particular investor did anything improper. But the U.S. government’s core worry remains focused on access—whether investors in sensitive industries. even as passive partners. could gain nonpublic information about technology or strategies that competitors could use.
Right now. the IPO is public. Musk is a household name for reaching a trillion-dollar valuation. and SpaceX is moving fast. Yet the investor list unsealed through the Delaware court fight keeps circling back to the same pressure point: who got in before the rules tightened. and what those investors may have been able to see when the company was still private.
SpaceX IPO Elon Musk Tomales Bay Capital MPCi David Su China investment national security Qatar Bracket Capital Delaware Supreme Court foreign investment regulation