By Becky Peterson

SpaceX's initial public offering has made Elon Musk a trillionaire. The second biggest payday goes to Antonio Gracias, his close friend and longtime investor who has made a career out of backing Musk.

With SpaceX going public Friday, Gracias and his firm Valor Equity Partners own 6.7% of class A shares, according to the company's IPO prospectus, giving the firm a $68 billion stake. That makes Gracias the second-largest SpaceX shareholder after Musk.

Gracias, 55 years old, started Valor as a private-equity firm mainly focused on distressed assets. He found success investing early in Tesla and SpaceX, and he has stayed close to Musk ever since.

"I have worked closely with Elon for over 20 years. His heart is pure, and his sole mission is to help humanity," Gracias wrote on X last year, after Musk stirred controversy with a salute at President Trump's inauguration.

He has waded into the trenches with Musk, at times applying a hands-on private-equity approach to solving operational bottlenecks at Musk's companies including Tesla and Twitter, which Musk rebranded as X. Gracias joined the board of SpaceX in 2010, served on the Tesla board for 14 years, and in May joined the boards of Musk's Neuralink and The Boring Company, according to SpaceX's prospectus.

During Musk's time in Washington, D.C., Gracias volunteered with the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency effort. There he led cost-cutting efforts at the Social Security Administration that have since drawn whistleblower complaints and scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers.

Gracias, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Gracias and Musk's relationship goes beyond business. The two have partied together, The Wall Street Journal has reported, and have traveled together with their families to Jackson Hole, Wyo., Spain, the Caribbean and Africa, according to court documents. Gracias was a groomsman at the wedding of Musk's brother Kimbal, and he has personally lent Musk money, court records show.

From Sizzler to SpaceX

Gracias was born in Detroit to a Spanish mother and a father from Goa, India. He credits his mom with seeding his interest in investing: She helped him buy $300 in Apple shares when he was in middle school, working at the lingerie store that she owned in a mall.

"I just watched how she went through the world and how she cared about the people that came in," he said in a March interview at a tech conference in Los Angeles. "I learned that being a great entrepreneur...what it really means is that you care about the people that work for you and your impact on the community."

Gracias attended the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service before getting a law degree from the University of Chicago. In 1995, while still in law school, he started his first firm, MG Capital, which acquired and ran distressed manufacturing companies.

Around that time Gracias met the investor David Sacks and eventually Musk. Sacks later became an executive at payments startup Confinity, which became PayPal. Gracias invested in the company.

PayPal soon merged with a competing startup founded by Musk. EBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002, making millionaires of its young founders, who became known as the PayPal mafia.

That year Gracias launched Valor's first $100 million private-equity fund. Valor's main business was acquiring and flipping traditional consumer businesses, including a ski resort and franchises of Sizzler and Little Caesars. In 2006, the fund invested $2 million into Tesla, where Musk was an investor and chair of the board. In 2008, Valor invested in SpaceX.

When Tesla went public in 2010, Valor owned 5.25% of the company, public filings show. That stake was worth $83.5 million at the IPO offer price, according to a Dow Jones analysis.

In the years after, Gracias or Valor invested in all of Musk's projects, including Neuralink, the Boring Company, the Twitter acquisition and xAI.

'Absolute support'

The business flows both ways. xAI, which merged with SpaceX in February, has more than $20 billion in contracts to lease computing equipment from Valor, according to SpaceX's IPO filing. In turn, Valor has paid the social media arm X, which is also part of SpaceX, $1 million each of the last couple of years to access its API.

Valor now employs 125 people, and it had $59 billion in regulated assets under management at the end of 2025, disclosures show. That is up considerably from three years ago, when its assets under management totaled $14.3 billion.

Valor currently has stakes in other name-brand startups including Anduril, Crusoe and Polymarket, as well as Harmony Biosciences Holdings, where Gracias sat on the board until this year. Last year, through his family foundation, Gracias invested to recapitalize the struggling MDMA research company Lykos Therapeutics, which is looking to manufacture the party drug for therapeutic purposes.

Gracias, who built his firm in Chicago but now lives in Miami, has taken a more public role in recent years, speaking at industry conferences and regularly appearing on the "All-In Podcast," a venture capitalist talk show that is popular in the tech industry. There, he is regarded as an honorary "Bestie" by the hosts, who include Sacks.

Musk has also celebrated their friendship.

"Antonio's ownership stems from absolute support, even when it looked like SpaceX would fail, and many investments over 2 decades," Musk said on X last week. "One could not ask for a better friend. He is a great man."

Write to Becky Peterson at becky.peterson@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

Elon Musk drew controversy for a salute at a rally celebrating President Trump's inauguration. "Musk Confidant Antonio Gracias Set for $68 Billion SpaceX Win," at 10:00 a.m. ET on June 11, incorrectly said the salute took place at the inauguration.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 12, 2026 13:14 ET (17:14 GMT)

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