Venture capital firms are seeing historic gains as SpaceX goes public. The rocket company’s IPO has pushed several investors into the ranks of the most lucrative deals ever. See which VC bets now top the all-time list.
The SpaceX IPO has set a new benchmark for venture capital returns, with early backers like Founders Fund and Valor Equity Partners now holding stakes valued in the hundreds of billions. This public debut not only marks the largest IPO in history, but also reorders the leaderboard of the most profitable VC investments ever recorded.
Traditionally, the best VC outcomes have been measured by either return multiples or total dollar gains. Benchmark’s legendary 90,000% return on its 1997 investment in Ebay is often cited, but in inflation-adjusted terms, its $4 billion stake at the 1999 IPO ($8.1 billion today) no longer cracks the top ten. Instead, SpaceX’s record-breaking listing at $135 per share has propelled its investors to the top of the all-time rankings, outpacing even the most storied tech bets.
SoftBank’s $20 million investment in Alibaba in 2000, which grew to a $100 billion stake by the 2014 IPO, and Naspers’ $32 million bet on Tencent, now worth $120 billion, have long dominated the list. But SpaceX’s backers are now in their league. Valor Equity Partners holds a $71 billion stake, while Founders Fund’s $20 million initial investment—plus $600 million more over the years—has ballooned to $67 billion. Other major winners include DFJ Growth ($33 billion), Sequoia Capital ($29 billion), and 137 Ventures ($19 billion), all thanks to SpaceX’s meteoric rise.
Notably, some high-profile VC wins, such as Andreessen Horowitz’s $10 billion stake in Coinbase or Accel’s $13.1 billion in Facebook, have been pushed down the list. Even Coatue’s $6 billion holding in SpaceX doesn’t make the cut. The full top ten, based on inflation-adjusted gains at IPO, now reads like a who’s who of global tech investing, with SpaceX and its investors claiming four of the top spots.
There are still unknowns, including the exact holdings of early SpaceX investors like Gigafund and Vy Capital, and when minority shareholders might exit. All current SpaceX figures are paper gains, as significant investors are locked up for at least a year post-IPO, according to the company’s S1 filing. Whether these valuations will hold remains to be seen, especially given SpaceX’s lofty price-to-earnings ratio—a trait it shares with Elon Musk’s other ventures.
For context, the methodology behind these rankings draws from Forbes, Bloomberg, WSJ, The Information, TechCrunch, Reuters, Crunchbase, and Fortune, with all numbers adjusted for inflation. Corporate investors like Google, which first backed SpaceX in 2015 and now holds a stake reportedly worth $107 billion, are excluded from the main list. Legendary early VC bets on companies like Google, Apple, and Nvidia are also absent, as most gains in those eras accrued to public shareholders rather than venture funds.
As the scale of VC returns grows, so does the competition among funds to identify the next breakout. This echoes trends seen in other sectors, such as automation, where firms like Base10 Partners are raising large funds to back transformative startups—see how they’re targeting logistics and payroll in their latest investment strategy.
Several of the funds and investors highlighted here have been fixtures on the Midas List for years, though eligibility rules mean some corporate and secondary investors are not included. In today’s market, many VC firms use continuity vehicles to hold shares post-IPO, further changing the landscape of venture returns.
Founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, SpaceX has grown from a privately funded startup to a global leader in commercial spaceflight. The company employs over 13,000 people and has launched hundreds of missions, including resupply runs to the International Space Station and the deployment of the Starlink satellite network. Its valuation has soared past $200 billion, making it one of the most valuable private companies before its historic IPO.
