SpaceX surge further boosts Saudi billionaire prince’s fortune
Friday’s debut share surge for Space X is bolstering the fortunes of one of Saudi Arabia’s richest men. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s investment firm Kingdom Holding Co. surged at Sunday’s open after Space X’s share gains on its first day of trading drove the value of the Saudi firm’s holding to almost $7 billion, or roughly half its market capitalization. Kingdom Holding said it holds 42.4 million shares in Space X, valued at $6.8 billion based on the company’s closing price. Kingdom shares rose as much as 5%, valuing the company at 56 billion riyals ($14.9 billion). SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies, began trading on Friday after raising $75 billion in the largest listing of all time. Its stock closed up 19% at $160.95, netting tens of billions of dollars in returns for a small number of firms. Founders Fund, a venture firm led by Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, owns a roughly 3% stake, while Andreessen Horowitz will get the biggest return in its history, Bloomberg News has reported. Sequoia Capital, which first backed SpaceX at the end of 2019, owns about 1.5% of the company. Earlier this month, Kingdom Holding said its holding represents 0.34% of SpaceX, while Prince Alwaleed’s personal exposure amounts to about 0.29% of Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company. The holdings have propelled Alwaleed’s net worth to just over $27 billion, a decade-high, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The Saudi billionaire first threw his lot in with Musk in 2022 when the Tesla Inc. co-founder bought Twitter — since rebranded as X — for $44 billion, rolling over his equity alongside investors like Larry Ellison and Andreessen Horowitz. The SpaceX listing will benefit other investors in Saudi Arabia too, including the $1 trillion Public Investment Fund, which owns a stake in Alwaleed’s firm, as well as the country as a whole, which has made artificial intelligence a central plank of its efforts to diversify the economy away from oil. Humain, a