Internal SpaceX documents show sweet deals offered to investors like a16z, Gigafund

Like most value propositions, Images of SpaceX sometimes he allows his own workers to earn some of their shares by selling them to authorized dealers by the company.

TechCrunch got an inside look Images of SpaceX a document about such a provision from May 2022. Musk written on X last month that SpaceX has such sales for employees about every 6 months.

These documents provide interesting information for investors who are authorized to buy these secondary shares, and the good deals they get.

In the offering, investors paid $70 per share to employees, the filing shows. That’s a huge profit compared to the share prices that investors pay when investing in an initial public offering – where the company sells shares directly to raise capital.

In the first sale in 2022, shares went to $270. (SpaceX didn’t sell the original shares at $70 since the Series G went for $77.46 per share, the documents say. That was back in 2015, according to PitchBook.)

Yes, the main reason for the huge discount on the price is that employees have common property and investors who buy stocks often buy preferred stocks that give them access to shares and liquidation preferences. They are the first to get their money back if the company sells itself.

In fact, this doc reveals that by 2022, if SpaceX sold itself, the first $6.67 billion would be owed to its preferred owners. Since then, the company has grown another $750 millionso that the amount paid to investors must be increased by that amount. Should SpaceX order its astronaut calculations $350 billionThe interests of this solution – paying investors first – will not be a problem for employees or common shareholders. But if one day the company goes for a fire sale of at least $7 billion, the shareholders will get nothing.

In terms of dividends, at the end of 2019, internal documents seen by TechCrunch stated that SpaceX did not pay anything. But if its board of directors wants to declare dividends, they are paid on a regular basis based on the time investors bought the shares. The amount ranges from a few bucks per share for the shares bought in its early and cheapest shares, to $10 a share for those bought later and more expensive.

For workers, the news for their shares in 2022 was very good. In February 2022, SpaceX issued a 10-for-1 stock split on its common shares A, B and C. The preferred shares were not distributed. The text does not clearly show the differences between the different groups that share it. In public companies, different groups often have voting rights. For example, one group of shares held by a founder may have 10 votes per share, which allows founders to control their companies while selling shares for cash.

In this case, it is not known when SpaceX will appear. Secondary sales like this are one of the ways that employees have to sell their shares.

Another good news for employees in this sale was that the $70 per share price was higher than the previous $56 in preparation for the stock split, Bloomberg reported at the time. And Bloomberg reported last month that the next opportunity could be as high as $108 to $110 each.

What money should they buy?

One of the most interesting things about these documents was that only a few investors were listed as legitimate buyers. And many of them were in the SpaceX orbit, so to speak, meaning that investors are vocal supporters of SpaceX founder Elon Musk or had some other past relationship.

They were:

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) was authorized to purchase approximately 4.3 million shares for approximately $300 million. Interestingly, the a16z is not a historic investment for SpaceX but it managed to reach its largest table in the industry. $250 million raised in August, 2022, according to PitchBook. He also became the main director of SpaceX $ 750 million round, at a cost of $ 137 billion in 2023, CNBC reported.

The company’s co-founder, Marc Andreessen, has known Musk for years in the tech circles of Silicon Valley billionaires. In the past few years, he has become a champion of Musk, showing admiration for SpaceX, Tesla, and the X CEO in various ways, from. how Musk uses his money to continue to launch startups applause Musk’s endurance. Andreessen publicly clashed with billionaire and fellow VC Vinod Khosla (backer of OpenAI) over X (Musk’s) after Khosla praised OpenAI. shortly after Musk sued OpenAI. The argument caught Musk’s attention.

Opinions of the company Aliya Capital Partners joins the Aliya Growth Fund, which was authorized to purchase more than 1.4 million shares for approximately $100 million. Aliya is a family office for the wealthy in Miami he says SpaceX is one of its biggest investments. Aliya – who has a share in many high-value startups such as Image AI, Impossible Foods, Anduril – especially rose to $ 360 million when Musk bought Twitter in 2022 for $ 44 billion. Reuters reported. Even if Musk takes the same ax to Twitter headcount, it is its management is causing some (and advertisers) to fleeAliya remained hopeful. “We believe that Twitter will return 4-5x in just a few years, with very little risk,” Aliya CEO Ross Kestin told Reuters in December 2022.

Aliya also happily wins SpaceX. In April, at the same time Bloomberg reported that its Starlink satellite the business is burning more money than it is bringing in, Aliya went to LinkedIn doubling under Musk’s vision. It wrote: “The latest reports show 500,000 new Starlink subscribers in the last four months – a coincidence – and more than 2.7 million in total. It seems like evidence of a deep vision of cooperation with endless execution.”

Gigafundco-founder and board member of SpaceX, was awarded more than 1.4 million shares at a cost of approximately $100 million. Gigafund was founded by fellow PayPal mafia member Luke Nosek who joined Peter Thiel when he started the Founders Fund. Thiel and Musk, of course, are members of the PayPal mafia. At Founders Fund, Nosek led the first VC investment in Space X, served as chair, and has been on the board ever since. He left Founders Fund in 2017 to set up Gigafund. Gigafund’s co-founder, Stephen Oskoui, was also an Investors Fund investor and led the company to partner with other Musk companies, including Neuralink and the Boring Company.

137 Activities is joining 137 Holdings, which was authorized to purchase 1.1 million shares at a cost of approximately $75 million. 137 Ventures is a VC fund that is interesting because Its claim to fame is these types of second-hand purchases. Founders Justin Fishner-Wolfson and Alex Jacobson met while at Founders Fund, working on his SpaceX investment. When Musk forced Thiel and the Founders Fund to support his new rocket company at the time, the initial investment in SpaceX was about $5 million until Fishner-Wolfson encouraged it to be much bigger. Founders Fund ended up writing a check that was about 20% of its fund and has continued to take major roles in other rounds of SpaceX from other funds, Fishner-Wolfson told Connie Loizos of TechCrunch in 2020. He founded 137 Ventures in 2011.

Point 2 Show Investment they were given 1 million shares, which cost $70 million. The Point 2 Prove appears to be a special purpose vehicle led by a secret global company You CapitalAccording to SEC Form D from July 2022. Vy was founded by Alexander Tamas, who spent his teenage years at Yuri Milner’s DST. Although Tamas does not say much in public, and therefore is not a supporter of Musk’s words, his company paid $ 700 million for the purchase of Twitter from Musk, Bloomberg reported at the time. Vy also owns a stake in SpaceX and has invested in several of Musk’s other companies such as Boring and Neuralink. A hope because of Vy’s fund Tamas is the investor who got DST his first shares in companies like Facebook, Airbnb, Spotify, Twitter, Alibaba and others. Marc Andreessen and co-founder of the VC firm Ben Horowitz once described Tamas to Bloomberg: “He’s a quick call for anyone trying to build the most successful companies in the world today.”

Atreides Management is associated with the Atreides Special Circumstances Fund, which was issued approximately 429,000 shares at a cost of approximately $30 million. The founder of Boston-based hedge fund Atreides, Gavin Baker, is back with SpaceX. Prior to founding Atreides in January 2019, Gavin spent 18 years at Fidelity, rising to manage the $17 billion Fidelity OTC Fund, his website says. He made his first investment in SpaceX while at Fidelity, and in 2022 SpaceX was Atreides’ main position among the VC part of his fund, Bloomberg said. (Atreides had $3 billion in assets under management that year but currently has $4 billion in AUM, according to The latest SEC filing.) The fund has also had a large stake in Tesla since 2019. And Baker is a supporter of Musk’s people. Just this month wrote a long post on X encourage to restore Musk’s $56 billion Tesla package and support Musk’s desire to move Tesla’s incorporation to Texas.

TCP Exploration Fund 2022 was issued over 357,000 shares for approximately $25 million. This is a fund associated with LA Opinion of the company Troy Capital Partners founded by Myspace founder Josh Berman, according to SEC Form D. However, by multiple accountsTroy’s managing partner, Anthony Tucker, oversees Troy’s SpaceX investments. Troy has been a backer since SpaceX’s Series J round in 2019, which saw the company raise about $28 billion after funding, according to PitchBook. Troy, who focuses on LA companies (although he doesn’t limit himself), was also an investor in Hyperloop One, which is about to build a high-speed subway between San Francisco and LA based on Musk’s idea.

In addition, this sale of SpaceX also gave the opportunity to two other investors to buy another share worth $ 50 million, although the records were too thin for both of them to know their association with Musk.

SpaceX and the company did not respond to multiple requests for comment except for Atreides, who declined comment.

Update: This article was originally published on June 19, 2024, and was updated on January 1, 2025, to include SpaceX’s latest calculations.