Founders Fund's SpaceX bet has become one of the great venture trades. Peter Thiel's firm put around $600m into the rocket company. At the IPO price, that stake is worth more than $50bn.
That is roughly an 80-fold return. Few venture bets have ever paid out on this scale.
The figure comes from Bloomberg. Founders Fund owns about three per cent of SpaceX. The company priced its listing at $135 a share, valuing it near $1.8tn and making Elon Musk the first trillionaire. Three per cent of that is about $53bn.
Inside the Founders Fund SpaceX windfall
This payout took nearly 20 years to build. Founders Fund was one of SpaceX's earliest outside backers. It first invested around 2008, the year the company nearly ran out of money before its Falcon 1 rocket reached orbit.
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The conviction held through round after round. SpaceX is now the firm's single largest position. When Founders Fund raised a fresh $6bn this year, the SpaceX stake already dwarfed everything else it owned.
Founders Fund is not alone at the top. Andreessen Horowitz holds a stake now worth more than $10bn, its biggest return ever. A handful of early backers will share tens of billions from one listing. The debut will also mint around 4,000 employee millionaires.
The catch: it is paper money
There is a caveat inside that $50bn. It is a mark-to-IPO value, not cash in the bank. Lock-up rules usually stop big holders selling everything at the debut.
So the gain is real, but not yet realised. Founders Fund cannot offload a three per cent stake on day one without moving the price. The size and cost of the holding also rest on Bloomberg's reporting, which the firm has not confirmed in public.
The valuation is contested, too. A Danish pension fund blacklisted the IPO, calling it overvalued and weak on governance. SpaceX's filing also hands Musk and insiders dominant voting control.
None of that dents the Founders Fund maths. Thiel's firm bought early, held on, and now sits on one of the largest venture returns on record. The harder question falls to the people buying at $135. They are paying for the future the early investors already cashed into.