SpaceX 's multi-billion dollar initial public offering (IPO) on Friday, June 12, made Elon Musk the first trillionaire in the market. But he wasn't the only one who significantly increased his wealth following the rocket manufacturer's IPO.
SpaceX's second-largest shareholder is a longtime friend and confidant of Musk. The American Antonio Gracias, 55, son of an Indian father and a Spanish mother, owns 6.7% of Class A preferred shares, which include voting rights.
Owner of Valor Equity Partners , Gracias' stake in the company is worth approximately US$68 billion. In the updated Forbes list, he is ranked number 994, with a net worth of US$4.3 billion.
In 2024, he was estimated to have US$1.1 billion. Last year, his fortune reached US$2.2 billion, and now it has practically doubled in size.
His first business venture was in a tech giant, even before he met Musk. Gracias always credited his mother with sparking his interest in investing. She helped him buy $300 worth of Apple stock when he was in elementary school.
“I just observed how she interacted with the world and how she cared about the people who came into her life,” the investor said in March during a technology conference in Los Angeles. Gracias attended Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service before graduating with a law degree from the University of Chicago.
In 1995, while still in law school, he founded his first company, MG Capital, which acquired and managed struggling manufacturing companies. Around this time, Gracias met investor David Sacks and, soon after, Musk.
Sacks later became an executive at the payments company Confinity, which became PayPal . Gracias invested in the company.
Shortly after, PayPal merged with a competing startup founded by Musk. In 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion, making its young founders millionaires.
That year, Gracias launched Valor's first private equity fund, worth US$100 million. Valor's main business was acquiring and reselling traditional consumer goods companies.
In 2006, the fund invested US$2 million in Tesla, where Musk was an investor and chairman of the board. In 2008, Valor invested in SpaceX.
When Tesla went public in 2010, Valor held a 5.25% stake in the company, according to public records. This stake was worth US$83.5 million at the initial public offering price, according to an analysis by Dow Jones.
In the following years, Gracias and Valor invested in all of Musk's projects, including Neuralink, the Boring Company, the acquisition of Twitter (now X), and xAI.
The company, which merged with SpaceX in February, has more than $20 billion in computing equipment lease agreements with Valor, according to SpaceX's IPO prospectus.
In turn, Valor paid X US$1 million in each of the last two years to access its application programming interface (API).
Valor currently employs 125 people and had US$59 billion in regulated assets under management at the end of 2025. This represents a considerable increase compared to 2022, when its assets under management totaled US$14.3 billion.
Currently, Valor holds stakes in startups such as Anduril, Crusoe, and Polymarket, as well as Harmony Biosciences Holdings, where Gracias was a board member until this year.
In recent years, Gracias has taken on a more public role, speaking at industry conferences and appearing more frequently on talk shows.
Musk has always celebrated their more than two-decade-long friendship. "Antonio's involvement in the company stems from unwavering support, even when it looked like SpaceX was going to fail, and from many investments over two decades," Musk said on X last week.
“I have worked closely with Elon for over 20 years. His heart is pure and his only mission is to help humanity,” Gracias wrote on X last year, shortly after Musk caused controversy following a greeting celebrating Donald Trump's victory for the White House.
Gracias joined the SpaceX board in 2010, served on Tesla's board for 14 years, and in May joined the boards of Neuralink and The Boring Company.
During Musk's time in Washington, in the Trump administration, Gracias volunteered at the Department of Government Efficiency. There, he led cost-cutting initiatives at the Social Security Administration, which have since attracted allegations of irregularities and attention from Democratic lawmakers.
In its IPO, SpaceX raised $75 billion, the largest amount ever achieved by a company in its initial public offering. With this, the company began its journey on the Nasdaq with a market capitalization of $1.77 billion.
On Monday, June 15th, the company's shares closed up 19.6%. With this, SpaceX's market capitalization surpassed US$2.5 trillion.
