{"id":632288,"date":"2026-06-11T02:28:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T02:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/632288\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T02:28:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T02:28:13","slug":"antonio-gracias-elon-musks-friend-is-set-to-reap-billions-from-spacexs-ipo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/632288\/","title":{"rendered":"Antonio Gracias, Elon Musk\u2019s Friend, Is Set to Reap Billions From SpaceX\u2019s IPO"},"content":{"rendered":"

For 25 years, Antonio Gracias has dedicated himself to serving as one of Elon Musk<\/a>\u2019s most loyal lieutenants, doing anything and everything to aid the tech mogul across his business and political empire.<\/p>\n

On Friday, it\u2019s payday.<\/p>\n

When SpaceX<\/a>, Mr. Musk\u2019s rocket company, most likely starts trading on the stock market that day, Mr. Gracias and his private equity firm, Valor Equity Partners, are set to reap one of the largest-ever returns from a private investment. Valor is the second-biggest disclosed shareholder in SpaceX after Mr. Musk, and the blockbuster initial public offering will almost certainly make both Mr. Gracias and his Chicago-based firm billions of dollars.<\/p>\n

Mr. Gracias and Valor control a $65 billion stake in SpaceX at its target I.P.O. valuation of $1.77 trillion, according to calculations by The New York Times. If SpaceX soars when it starts trading, Mr. Gracias, 55, will instantly become one of the world\u2019s wealthiest people \u2014 though he would still be less rich than Mr. Musk, who could become a trillionaire.<\/p>\n

Mr. Gracias\u2019s potential windfall from SpaceX shows how extreme wealth can be created by betting on one friend over and over \u2014 in this case tying himself to Mr. Musk, a once-in-a-lifetime wealth-generation machine, and holding on for dear life.<\/p>\n

\u201cAntonio\u2019s ownership stems from absolute support, even when it looked like SpaceX would fail, and many investments over 2 decades,\u201d Mr. Musk posted on Saturday on X<\/a>, his social media platform. \u201cOne could not ask for a better friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Gracias is so financially intertwined with SpaceX that the company\u2019s I.P.O. filing required a 390-word footnote to identify the 30 separate Valor- and Gracias-affiliated entities that control 503 million of the rocket maker\u2019s shares, totaling about 3.7 percent of the company. Five of those entities appear to be space-focused funds<\/a>, or what Mr. Gracias has called \u201csingle asset vehicles.\u201d<\/p>\n

To achieve that stake, Valor invested $400 million to $500 million in SpaceX as of 2021, according to estimates that Mr. Gracias gave in two depositions related to Mr. Musk\u2019s pay package<\/a> at Tesla, his electric automaker.<\/p>\n

Most of the returns from SpaceX\u2019s I.P.O. will accrue to Valor\u2019s investors, called \u201climited partners,\u201d Mr. Gracias said<\/a> last month, though he said he had a \u201clarge\u201d personal stake in the funds. Mr. Gracias said in the depositions that for the main funds that have invested in SpaceX, his firm takes 20 percent of the profits that it makes for those investors, and he then personally takes about 50 percent of those profits made by the firm. Precisely how much he will be worth could not be determined.<\/p>\n

When asked in one of the depositions if he had personally generated \u201cdynastic or generational wealth\u201d because of Mr. Musk, Mr. Gracias agreed. \u201cWe have amassed a great deal of wealth, yes,\u201d he said in 2022.<\/p>\n

Valor has a close financial relationship with SpaceX in other ways. The rocket company owes Valor about $20 billion after xAI, a SpaceX subsidiary, struck three deals with the investment firm to lease infrastructure for artificial intelligence, according to its I.P.O. filing.<\/p>\n

\u201cValor and Antonio have stuck with this so doggedly and with such determination,\u201d said James Star, an investor in SpaceX and Valor. The investment generated \u201ca lot of controversy over a long period of time,\u201d including with Valor\u2019s investors.<\/p>\n

A representative for Mr. Gracias, who also serves on SpaceX\u2019s board, said he had no comment, citing the so-called quiet period before an I.P.O.<\/p>\n

Mr. Gracias is a son of immigrants, with one parent born in Spain and the other in India. Raised in East Grand Rapids, Mich., he attended Georgetown University and then the University of Chicago law school. There, he befriended a classmate, David Sacks, who became a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor.<\/p>\n

In 1995, while in law school, Mr. Gracias began a predecessor firm to Valor with $400,000. It primarily invested in manufacturing but eventually bet on a company where Mr. Sacks worked, Confinity. Confinity and a start-up that Mr. Musk had created later merged to form PayPal. Through PayPal and Mr. Sacks, Mr. Gracias met Mr. Musk.<\/p>\n

The two men became friends. After Mr. Musk\u2019s eldest son died around 2002, Mr. Gracias consoled Mr. Musk, according to the depositions.<\/p>\n

In 2005, Mr. Gracias invested in Tesla, joining the company\u2019s board two years later at Mr. Musk\u2019s request. Mr. Musk, meanwhile, invested in Mr. Gracias\u2019s two first funds at Valor.<\/p>\n

Mr. Gracias also helped Mr. Musk develop the idea for SpaceX, and their ties tightened further when Valor invested $25 million in the company in 2008. Mr. Gracias joined SpaceX\u2019s board two years later.<\/p>\n

Mr. Musk said Mr. Gracias had given him $1 million as a \u201cshort-term loan when I ran out of money\u201d in 2008, which helped SpaceX and Tesla when they had little cash. Recounting those companies\u2019 near-death years in a 2012 speech at the Economic Club of Chicago, Mr. Musk motioned to Mr. Gracias.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we would\u2019ve made it without his help, so thank you,\u201d a tuxedoed Mr. Musk said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Gracias prides himself on getting his hands dirty. During a difficult period at Tesla<\/a> in 2018, he said in one of the depositions, he \u201cslept in the conference room next to\u201d Mr. Musk at the car company\u2019s factory.<\/p>\n

Sam Teller, a longtime chief of staff to Mr. Musk who later worked for Valor, said Mr. Gracias \u201cshowed up during the most challenging times, not just with capital, but as an invaluable operational partner alongside us on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 2021, Mr. Gracias had personally made $900 million to $1 billion thanks to his investment in Tesla, before taxes, he said in a deposition. (Tesla\u2019s stock has since doubled.)<\/p>\n

Mr. Gracias was technically an independent director at Tesla until 2021, though what it means to be independent in Mr. Musk\u2019s companies has been challenged by critics. The two men have vacationed together in Africa, the Bahamas and Jackson Hole in Wyoming, and spent holidays at each other\u2019s homes, according to the depositions. Mr. Gracias is also close to Mr. Musk\u2019s younger brother, Kimbal, accompanying him to the emergency room after he broke his neck skiing and serving as a groomsman in his 2018 wedding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are usually talking about business when we are socializing anyway,\u201d Mr. Gracias said in one of the depositions.<\/p>\n

When Mr. Musk bought Twitter, now X, in a contentious $44 billion deal in 2022, it was little surprise that Mr. Gracias pledged his support.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am 100% with you Elon,\u201d Mr. Gracias wrote in texts during the acquisition, which were later made public as part of litigation. He cited \u201cThe Godfather\u201d and vowed to go to the \u201cmattresses no matter what\u201d to defend the principle of free speech \u201cwith our lives or we are lost to the darkness.\u201d Using expletives, he added: \u201cSorry for the swearing. I am getting excited.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Gracias was intimately involved in organizing Mr. Musk\u2019s financing for Twitter. After the purchase closed in October 2022, he helped Mr. Musk with layoffs and reorganization at the social media company.<\/p>\n

Like Mr. Musk, Mr. Gracias was a Democrat for most of his career. He attended a 2016 presidential debate as a supporter of Hillary Clinton, and posted extensively online about his support for Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois. (Mr. Gracias lived in Chicago until 2021, when he moved to Miami amid a divorce.)<\/p>\n

But like Mr. Musk, Mr. Gracias took a turn in recent years.<\/p>\n

When Donald J. Trump won the presidential election in 2024, Mr. Gracias joined Mr. Musk<\/a> at Mar-a-Lago to sketch out a plan for cutting the federal bureaucracy. He was motivated by concerns that the United States was flirting with becoming a \u201ckleptocracy\u201d and a \u201cLatin American-style autocracy,\u201d he said on a podcast. Mr. Gracias and two Valor employees then worked with Mr. Musk in Washington to crack down on what they said was fraud at the Social Security Administration.<\/p>\n

In March 2025, Mr. Gracias shed his usual penchant for anonymity at a high-profile political engagement in Wisconsin<\/a> with Mr. Musk, who was rallying for a conservative judicial candidate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to welcome my friend Antonio Gracias to the stage,\u201d Mr. Musk told the crowd<\/a> of 2,000 in Green Bay. Out walked Mr. Gracias, who spent over an hour onstage talking through a presentation, which was at times misleading, that he said exposed rampant fraud in Social Security rolls due to undocumented immigrants. He supported federal employees and legal immigration, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not political,\u201d he said to cheers. \u201cThis is about America and the future of America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Gracias seems to be channeling his wealth primarily into the world of psychedelics. In 2023, his charitable foundation gave $16 million to start a program at Harvard focused on research into the drugs. His foundation is also trying to execute<\/a> a complicated takeover of Lykos Therapeutics, a psychedelic biotechnology company.<\/p>\n

Mr. Gracias has promised to stay active in A.I. as well, disputing that the technology will cause widespread job losses and declaring at a conference in March that he was \u201cgoing to work really hard in the next five or 10 years to make it not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

But his main interest remains Mr. Musk. Last month, Mr. Gracias joined the boards of two more Musk companies, Neuralink and the Boring Company, according to SpaceX\u2019s I.P.O. filing.<\/p>\n

Ryan Mac contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For 25 years, Antonio Gracias has dedicated himself to serving as one of Elon Musk\u2019s most loyal lieutenants,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[214042,188811,6412,15865,214041,1730,74078,13934,188809,90,416,7018,12990,188816,56,54,55,170390],"class_list":["post-632288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-antonio","tag-boards-of-directors","tag-computers-and-the-internet","tag-elon","tag-gracias","tag-high-net-worth-individuals","tag-initial-public-offerings","tag-musk","tag-private-spaceflight","tag-science","tag-space","tag-space-and-astronomy","tag-space-exploration-technologies-corp","tag-tesla-motors-inc","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-valor-equity-partners"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}