From welder to Saudi billionaire: A list of big winners from SpaceX's blockbuster IPO

As the founder and largest stakeholder of SpaceX, Musk held around 42% stake at the time of the IPO. After the IPO, Musk's wealth surged by around $750 billion (₹715.58 lakh crore) after the listing, making him the world's first-ever trillionaire.

He is one of SpaceX's earliest backers and a close ally of Elon Musk. His stake in the company is reportedly worth over $75 billion after the IPO.

Hernandez joined SpaceX in 2015 as a welder and received employee stock options worth around $10,000 (around ₹9.5 lakh) as part of compensation. After the IPO, he made around 100x on his ESOPs as his shares ballooned to nearly $1 million (nearly ₹9.5 crore).

The Saudi Prince-owned Kingdom Holding made its first investment in SpaceX as late as 2022. At present, it holds around 42.4 million SpaceX shares. The value of its stake rose to nearly $6.8-7 billion after the blockbuster IPO, accounting for roughly half of Kingdom Holding's market capitalisation.

In 2015, Google invested around $900 million (around ₹8,500 crore) in SpaceX alongside Fidelity and acquired a 7.64% stake in the company, which it later diluted to about 6%.

At the time, SpaceX's valuation stood at around $12 billion. After the IPO, Google's return on investment stood at nearly 147 times the original investment as the value of its stake jumped to around $132 billion (₹1.26 lakh crore).

The Peter Thiel-led Founders Fund backed the company in 2008 when it had just suffered multiple launches and was close to running out of cash before the Falcon 1 rocket launch. The fund invested around $600 million cumulatively across multiple funding rounds over nearly two decades, taking its stake in SpaceX to around 3%.

After the IPO, the fund scored roughly 83x its investment as it logged returns worth more than $50 billion.

Sequoia Capital made its first investment in SpaceX as late as 2019. The venture capital invested around $2 billion across multiple rounds after entering SpaceX. After the IPO, Sequoia Capital made around 10x its initial investment as it logged returns worth over $20 billion on a stake of around 1.5%.