Who will benefit most from the SpaceX IPO? Mostly Elon – and some from his inner circle

Although there have been some surprising revelations in SpaceX’s S-1 as it prepares to become a public company, Elon Musk’s total control over the company is probably not one of them.

I could argue that the weird provision allowing Elon Musk to receive up to a billion more shares once a million people are living on Mars (yes, really) is perhaps the most surprising thing, given that it adds to his already large, company-controlled cache. It is also largely non-serious. By the way, Musk now controls those shares and can vote.

But even a billion additional super-voting rights shares in this company’s founding are irrelevant because Musk is, by far, the company’s largest shareholder.

He holds 850 million Class A shares, which are entitled to 1 vote per share, and another approximately 5.6 billion Class B shares, which are entitled to 10 votes per share. This scenario includes billions of shares owned by one million people living in the SpaceX company-town colony on Mars.

Science-fiction scenarios aside, there are a handful of people who will benefit most if the SpaceX IPO is successful and the stock continues to perform well in the future: 5% shareholders. These are the people who hold at least a 5% stake in the company.

Although the company has not yet revealed how many shares it will sell or at what price, whispers on the street are that the upcoming IPO will raise a whopping $75 billion, with a post-money valuation of $1.7 trillion. At those figures, even a 1% stake is worth $17 billion.

Here’s who has what.

Elon Musk, Founder, CEO, CTO and Chairman. Total SpaceX Stock Holdings: Just Over 6.42 billion shares.

Antonio Gracias, investors and board members. Total SpaceX Stock Holdings: Just Over 503.4 million shares

Gracias is the founder and CEO of Valour Management and a long-time Musk friend, pro-Musk board member and financier. He was on Tesla’s board from its early days until the years after its IPO. During this time, he was also a board member of Musk’s solar company Solar City. Its controversial sale to Tesla. He has backed Musk’s Neuralink and held board roles at companies including The Boring Company. He was also among the financiers who agreed to finance Musk’s failed $97 billion hostile takeover attempt of OpenAI in early 2025.

Luke Nosek, investors and board members. Total SpaceX stock holdings: approx. 33 million shares.

Nosek is the co-founder of venture investment firm GigaFund and fellow PayPal Mafia member. Nosek joined Peter Thiel at Founders Fund early on and led Founders’ first investment in SpaceX. He then took a board seat and has been on the board ever since. GigaFund also backs other Musk companies, The Boring Company and Neuralink.

Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX COO. Total SpaceX stock holdings: approx. 12.6 million shares.

Shotwell has been with SpaceX since 2002 and has been COO since 2008. She’s the aerospace engineer genius who runs the day-to-day operations. In another era, with a different majority founder, someone like Shotwell would have been given co-founder status and would likely have had a larger stake in the company. However, people find it difficult to call him underpaid. For example, in 2025, he received a large tranche of restricted stock units, bringing his total compensation that year to $85.8 million.

Brett Johnson, CFO. Total SpaceX stock holdings: approx. 9.6 million shares.

Brett Johnson has been the CFO of SpaceX since 2011. Prior to SpaceX, he held CFO and financier roles in the semiconductor industry.

Ira Ehrenpreis: Investors and board members. Total SpaceX Stock Holdings: 809,050 shares.

Ehrenparis is the founder and managing member of VC firm DBL Partners. He has been on the SpaceX board
Since February 2026, he is also on the board of Tesla.

Randy Glynn, Investors, Board Members. Total SpaceX stock holdings: 277,800 shares.

Glenn is co-founder and managing partner of DFJ Growth.

And there are about 400 other VCs. SpaceX has so far raised about $30 billion in private capital from hundreds of investors, according to PitchBook estimates. No one else has a stake large enough to report, although, again, even a small percentage of the company should be worth billions in the first place.

However, the company did share the prices that these investors paid for their shares. Series A investors paid $1 per share. Series F investors paid $7.50, while the final investors in Series N paid $270 per share.