A top-ranking member of DOGE, who’s also one of Elon Musk’s closest friends, reportedly stands to net millions hawking shares out the back door of the Tesla CEO’s private companies.
Venture capitalist Antonio Gracias, founder of Valor Equity Partners, is apparently offering investors roughly $1 billion in SpaceX and xAI shares as part of a private sale likely to secure millions for both himself and others involved in the deal, according to a Wall Street Journal article published Thursday.
That offering also throws into question the kind of corporate maneuvering SpaceX has undertaken, despite its exponential growth over the past two decades, to remain a private firm, in turn limiting how far it is legally required to publicly disclose information about its finances.
Having previously served on the board of both Tesla and SpaceX, Gracias is reportedly one of Musk’s oldest and closest friends, with both men’s families spending Christmases and other vacations together.
Earlier in March, he also joined Musk’s controversial DOGE initiative, reportedly leading the charge on slashing costs at the Social Security Administration—a move which even hardline Republican officials and diehard MAGA loyalists have expressed concern could cost President Donald Trump among more economically vulnerable members of his support base.
According to the WSJ, it’s unusual for companies to remain private while enjoying the kind of growth SpaceX has seen over the past few years, with its value rocketing from just $12 billion in 2015 to roughly $350 billion toward the end of last year.
The newspaper states that one of the ways Musk’s space exploration firm has been able to maintain its private status, and the accompanying exemption from public disclosure of key financial information like profits and losses, is for existing investors to sell off shares via ‘special-purpose vehicles’.
These are essentially holding companies that appear as a single shareholder on SpaceX’s records, but in fact represent the interests of multiple other investors, many of whom have secured those investments through private offerings from Musk and other members of his inner circle.
Gracias’ offering is only the latest in a series of similar ventures by other business interests close to Musk, among them MySpace co-founder Josh Berman and SpaceX board member Luke Nosek, to provide select investors with entry into the tech titan’s companies, per the WSJ’s report.
It also comes amid mounting criticism of Musk’s proximity to the Trump administration, not least with SpaceX emerging as a frontrunner to win lucrative contracts for the construction of the president’s ‘Golden Dome’ missile defense shield, as well as the perceived influence Musk’s role as DOGE chief has afforded him over the very authorities empowered to regulate his various business interests.
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