Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Valor, and the biggest VC winners from SpaceX’s IPO

The Space X IPO is a culmination—not only of the rocket and AI company’s journey but of a decades-long shift in venture capital. Consider: In 2002, the year Elon Musk founded Space X, venture capital was in the aftermath of the dotcom bust and far smaller as an industry than it is today. Though it’s hard to say exactly the size, contemporary reports say that U.S. VCs deployed $20.3 billion into private companies in 2002. Some numbers come in higher, others lower, but regardless: Those 2002 numbers for all of VC are quaint next to the tens of billions poured into one funding round in OpenAI or Anthropic today. Venture’s scaled way up, and SpaceX going public means VC’s behemoths are set to win even more. Some great investor winners in the SpaceX IPO didn’t exist at the time SpaceX was first founded: For one, Founders Fund—started by PayPal mafiosos Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek, and Ken Howery in 2005—which first backed Musk’s rocket moonshot in 2008 to the tune of $20 million. Or Andreessen Horowitz, founded in 2009, which first backed SpaceX in 2023 when the company was still valued at $137 billion. Other key winners: Sequoia, which first backed SpaceX in 2019 with partner Shaun Maguire leading, has invested more than $2 billion in the company across funds, a source familiar with the matter confirmed. There’s Valor Equity Partners—run by longtime Musk ally Antonio Gracias—whose stake in SpaceX could even (impossible as it may seem) go north of $90 billion. (Other Valor investments include Zipline and WEKA.) Arguably the most interesting investor winner: DFJ Growth—founded in the 2000s after spinning off legendary-eventually-embattled firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson on the then-crazy idea there would be numerous unicorns staying private longer—invested in SpaceX from its first institutional fund in 2009. Initially, DFJ Growth backed SpaceX to the tune of $10 million, and since has invested more than $800 million in the company. Randy Glein, cofounder and managing partner at DF