The SpaceX IPO is set to make many richer than the rest. While it will make the company owner Elon Musk, the world’s first trillionaire, his allies will be winning no less.Among them is Antonio Gracias, a Musk loyalist who will soon become a billionaire. The 55-year-old founder of Valor Equity Partners, has spent more than two decades supporting Musk’s ventures and now, he is set to make $68 billion, around Rs 6,468.16 crore, after the much-awaited IPO.While many know Gracias as a staunch Musk ally, what usually goes under the radar is the fact that he has roots in India. His father, immigrated to the United States from Goa and eventually became a practising neurosurgeon in Detroit. His mother, is a Spanish pharmacist who ran a pharmacy. He was raised in the United States by his family and pursued his education in international economics at Georgetown University in the early 1990s. After this he spent two years working at Goldman Sachs before, attending the University of Chicago for law school.In 1995, while still in law school, he started his first firm, MG Capital, which acquired and ran distressed manufacturing companies. He also went on to study at Waseda University in Japan before working at Nikko Securities in Tokyo.Over time, he built Valor Equity Partners into a major investment firm with stakes across the esteemed technology sector.
The second winner
When SpaceX goes public on Friday, Gracias and his firm Valor Equity Partners, will own 6.7% of Class A shares, which as per the company’s IPO prospectus, gives the firm a $68 billion stake. That will make Gracias the second-largest shareholder in the company after Musk.His firm, was started as a private-equity firm mainly focused on distressed assets. The success he found was in investing early in Tesla and SpaceX. “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.He joined the board of SpaceX in 2010, served on the Tesla board for 14 years, joined the boards of Neuralink in May 2026, The Boring Company, X and xAI as well. Moreover, when Musk trotted to DOGE, Gracias went in too.However, it wasn’t SpaceX that brought them together. Gracias and Musk go way back. Gracias was an investor in PayPal, which merged with Musk’s startup eBay. When he launched Valor, Gracia invested $2 million in Tesla and in 2008, he put money 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.Musk has even acknowledged his friendship with Gracias. “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.”Once, he also revealed that Gracias provided him with a short-term $1 million loan to navigate a difficult phase. Now, he is set to earn even more in profits with the SpaceX IPO.
