Who will benefit most from SpaceX’s IPO? Mainly Elon — and a few of his inner circle

While there are some shocking revelations in SpaceX’s S-1 as it prepares to go public, Elon Musk’s ultimate control of the company may not be one of them.

I could argue that the odd arrangement where Elon Musk goes up to a billion more The shares to add to his already oversized cache controlling the company when a million people live on Mars (yes, really), is perhaps the most impressive. It’s also pretty silly. Musk controls and can vote those shares now, by the way.

But even a billion in extra voting shares are insignificant to the creation of this company because Musk is, by miles, the company’s largest shareholder.

It owns just under 850 million Class A shares, which carry 1 vote per share, and another nearly 5.6 billion Class B shares, which carry 10 votes per share. That includes the billions of shares that depend on a million people living in a SpaceX company-city colony on Mars.

Sci-fi conditions aside, there are few people who stand to benefit more if SpaceX’s IPO is successful and the stock continues to do well going forward: its 5% shareholders. These are the people who own at least 5% of the company.

While the company has yet to say how many shares it will sell or at what price, the rumored number going around is that this IPO will raise a whopping $75 billion, with a post-money valuation of $1.7 trillion. At those numbers, even a 1% stake is worth $17 billion.

Here’s the rundown of who owns what.

Elon Muskfounder, CEO, CTO and chairman. Total SpaceX shares: slightly more 6.42 billion shares.

Antonio Graciasinvestor and board member. Total SpaceX shares: slightly more 503.4 million shares

Gracias is the founder and CEO of both Valor Management and a longtime Musk friend, board member, and Musk financier. He was on Tesla’s board from its start-up days until the years after its IPO. He also served on the board of Musk’s solar energy company Solar City during his controversial sale to Tesla. He supported and held board roles for Musk’s Neuralink, 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 Nosekinvestor and board member. Total SpaceX shares: approx 33 million shares.

Nosek is a co-founder of the investment firm Gigafund and a member of the PayPal mafia. Nosek joined Peter Thiel at Founders Fund in its early days and led Founders’ first investment in Space X. He then took a seat on the board and has been on the board ever since. Gigafund also backs Musk’s other companies, The Boring Company and Neuralink.

Gwynne ShotwellSpaceX COO. Total SpaceX shares: approx 12.6 million shares.

Shotwell has been with SpaceX since 2002 and COO since 2008. She is the aerospace engineering genius who runs day-to-day operations. In another era, with a different founding majority, someone like Shotwell would have been given co-founder status and probably a larger stake in the company. However, it is hard to call her underpaid. For example, in 2025, she received a large tranche of restricted stock units, bringing her total compensation to $85.8 million that year.

Brett JohnsonCFO. Total SpaceX shares: approx 9.6 million shares.

Bret Johnsen has been CFO of SpaceX since 2011. Prior to SpaceX he held CFO and finance roles in the semiconductor industry.

Ira Ehrenpreisinvestor and board member. Total SpaceX Shares: 809,050 shares.

Ehrenpreis is a founder and managing member of VC firm DBL Partners. He was on the board of SpaceX
from February 2026 and is also on Tesla’s board of directors.

Randy Glineinvestor, member of the Board of Directors Total SpaceX shares: 277,800 shares.

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

And about 400 other VCs. SpaceX has raised about $30 billion in private capital to date from hundreds of investors, according to Pitchbook estimates. None of the others have a large enough stake to be listed, though, again, even a small percentage of the company should be worth billions on debut.

However, the company shared the prices those investors paid for their shares. Series A investors paid $1 per share. Series F investors paid $7.50 and end investors, Series N, paid $270 per share.