Anthony Scaramucci has said he owns shares of SpaceX. So does 2 Chainz, the rapper; Betsy DeVos, the former education secretary; and the hosts of a podcast called “Rich Habits” and more than 150 of its followers.
Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company is about to hold what could be the largest initial public offering ever, allowing anyone to own its stock after 24 years as a private firm. So why does it seem that so many people already do?
The answer lies in the opaque market for private company shares, driven largely by what are known as special purpose vehicles, or S.P.V.s. These legal entities, which are designed to hold assets like equities, have become a popular way to invest in private company stock as groups of investors can pool money for a single investment.
SpaceX, founded in 2002, is among the private companies that investors have formed the most S.P.V.s for, according to a tally by The New York Times. More than 170 such investment vehicles with the name “SpaceX” or “Space Exploration” in them were set up mostly in the past six years, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Not all of the entities that own SpaceX stock include the company in their names.
Now as SpaceX aims to raise more than $50 billion in an I.P.O. as soon as June, that has turbocharged the private market for the company’s shares. Demand for SpaceX stock has been “virtually insatiable,” said Sim Desai, the founder and chief executive of Hiive, a website that enables private stock sales.
The proliferation of SpaceX investment vehicles showcases a thriving shadow market for private company stock and signals the level of interest in owning the company’s shares after it goes public. The vehicles also offer a preview of what could happen with two high-profile artificial intelligence companies — OpenAI and Anthropic, for which investors have also formed S.P.V.s — if they go public as soon as this year.
“The story of growth in American equities is increasingly being told in the private markets and not in the public markets,” said Shriram Bhashyam, the chief operating officer of Sydecar, which handles the administrative side of private stock sales.
Mr. Musk, who is embroiled in a trial against OpenAI in federal court in Oakland, Calif., and a SpaceX spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
Over the past decade, smaller investors have used special purpose vehicles to back companies, including Twitter and Uber, before they went public. They became more prevalent as start-ups stayed private for longer and raised larger rounds of funding, while early investors and employees looked to cash out.
For many people, owning shares of SpaceX before its I.P.O. is a bragging right. Regulators restrict who can invest in private companies because the deals can be risky. The companies have the right to approve who owns their shares. Investing in such companies typically requires an “in,” so special purpose vehicles are one way to help investors without one.
Some people have praised the boom in trading private market stocks for democratizing access to lucrative investment opportunities. Others have slammed it as ripe for fraud.
Investors do not have access to much information about a private company’s financials or the provenance of the shares they are buying. Some vehicles can be “layered,” with one S.P.V. investing in another S.P.V., and so on, with each entity charging fees along the way.
The layers could pose problems. Democrats have raised alarms about Chinese investors who have bought into SpaceX through special purpose vehicles and offshore accounts, viewing them as potential national security threats.
“We have concerns that Chinese investors could potentially gain access to nonpublic information,” Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Andy Kim of New Jersey wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in February.
Mr. Musk, a co-founder of the digital payments firm PayPal, initially funded SpaceX with his own money. He also took on investments from former PayPal associates such as Peter Thiel and Luke Nosek of the venture capital firm Founders Fund, and friends like Antonio Gracias, who runs Valor Equity Partners.
As SpaceX grew, its investors expanded to include Justin Fishner-Wolfson, a former Founders Fund investor who started 137 Ventures, and Iqbaljit Kahlon, a former employee of Mithril Capital, one of Mr. Thiel’s investment firms.
Mr. Kahlon started his own investment firm, Tomales Bay Capital, around 2016, and Mr. Thiel sold him some SpaceX shares. Mr. Kahlon created a series of S.P.V.s to buy the shares, according to filings from a 2025 lawsuit. The vehicles raised hundreds of millions of dollars and typically charged annual fees of 2 percent, as well as 20 percent of any profits. Mr. Kahlon’s investors included Ms. DeVos, the former education secretary, according to the filings.
In 2021, Mr. Kahlon ran afoul of SpaceX. One investor in his special purpose vehicles was Leo Group, a Chinese company that announced a $50 million investment in SpaceX. The announcement alarmed SpaceX executives; having Chinese investors could hurt the company’s status as a U.S. government contractor, according to court filings.
Mr. Kahlon kicked Leo Group out of the investment vehicle. The Chinese company sued for breach of contract and fiduciary duty in 2022. A judge largely sided with Mr. Kahlon; Leo Group has appealed. The lawsuit and SpaceX’s ties to Chinese investors were earlier reported by ProPublica.
Mr. Kahlon declined to comment. Leo Group did not respond to a request for comment.
Over time, the number of special purpose vehicles related to SpaceX ballooned. S.P.V. investors can sell their stakes to others, who might create their own vehicles for backers to buy into. SpaceX shares fanned out further from their original owners.
That’s how followers of the “Rich Habits” podcast got into SpaceX. Christian Blackwell and Austin Hankwitz, who run the personal finance podcast and several newsletters, offered their fans the opportunity to invest in private tech stocks alongside them through a firm called Witz Ventures.
Last year, Mr. Blackwell and Mr. Hankwitz gained access to several chunks of SpaceX shares, gathering investments from 98 followers for one vehicle worth $724,000 and from 49 investors for another worth $308,000, according to Mr. Blackwell and securities filings.
The shares came from Witz Ventures’ special purpose vehicles’ buying stakes in other special purpose vehicles operated by DataPower Capital, a New York venture firm. DataPower bought the SpaceX shares from a different venture firm, which David Yakobovitch, DataPower’s founder, declined to name.
Mr. Yakobovitch said he had verified that the firm that supplied the shares was listed on SpaceX’s official list of shareholders. He avoids investing in vehicles that are more than one layer removed from that list because each layer charges fees that can add up.
“If it’s going several layers down, it can get a little murky,” he said.
The rapper 2 Chainz said on a podcast in March that he had bought into SpaceX “very early” through private equity connections. “I was in the right place at the right time,” he said. Mr. Scaramucci, a onetime adviser of President Trump’s, said in April that he owned SpaceX stock through a “private round.”
It is unclear if either invested through an S.P.V. Mr. Scaramucci and representatives for 2 Chainz did not respond to requests for comment.
Pitches to buy SpaceX shares have intensified since news of the company’s I.P.O. broke in December.
In February, Jori Horberg, a partner at the venture capital firm Fearless Fund, emailed “friends and family,” offering them a chance to be part of a $200 million purchase of SpaceX stock at a valuation of $800 billion, according to the message, which The Times reviewed. The investment carried a fee of 6 percent, as well as 20 percent of the profits. Fearless Fund sought checks of at least $1 million and needed commitments by the next day.
Whether the deal came together is not clear. Ms. Horberg did not respond to requests for comment.
Start-ups sometimes bristle at people who peddle their stock because they wish to keep tight control over their shares. They also worry about the potential for fraud. Stripe, the private payments company worth $159 billion, warned that “any offer to invest in Stripe that does not come from or through Stripe is very likely a scam.”
From 2019 to 2021, New York-based Vika Ventures raised more than $6 million from 46 investors, promising to get them into private companies including SpaceX. But the firm’s founder kept the money and bought a Corvette Stingray and a Patek Philippe watch, according to the Department of Justice and the S.E.C. In 2023, he pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Last year, the authorities arrested an investor at Sestante Capital for a similar scheme hawking shares he did not have in the private defense company Anduril.
On a recent podcast, Matt Grimm, an Anduril co-founder, expressed frustration over those claiming to have access to shares in private tech companies.
“How many investors in America think they own a chunk of SpaceX when they’re actually funding their ex-roommate’s boyfriend’s coke habit in Miami?” he said.
Kirsten Grind contributed reporting from San Francisco. Susan C. Beachy and Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
