Australian mining billionaire Gina Rinehart has made a major bet on Elon Musk’s SpaceX that could lead to more than just a financial return.
Rinehart — Australia’s richest person with a fortune estimated at $38.4 billion by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — invested through Hancock Prospecting, her privately held mining and agriculture company.
Hancock Prospecting said Monday that it was allocated shares in SpaceX’s initial public offering. The company did not disclose the size of its “significant investment,” though The Wall Street Journal reported that the stake was worth more than $1 billion.
“In the future, we also see the possibility of mutually beneficial arrangements between SpaceX and Hancock Prospecting’s significant critical minerals investments, as demand grows for the materials and infrastructure needed to support advanced technology,” said Garry Korte, the CEO of Hancock Prospecting, in a statement. He described the SpaceX share allocation as “generous.”
The comments point to potential opportunities between SpaceX and Rinehart’s growing portfolio of critical minerals investments.
SpaceX has identified asteroid mining as a potential future opportunity, while NASA is supporting efforts to develop a commercial economy on and around the moon that could eventually include resource extraction.
Those ambitions could increase demand for the kinds of critical minerals that Rinehart has spent years investing in.
While Rinehart built her fortune through iron ore — the key ingredient in steelmaking — she has spent years investing in rare earths and other critical minerals.
Hancock holds major stakes in companies including Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths and US-based MP Materials, two of the most prominent rare-earth producers outside China.
Rinehart, the executive chairman of Hancock Prospecting, described the SpaceX investment as significant.
“We are pleased to have received an allocation in what has been an extremely popular and oversubscribed IPO,” she said in the statement.
“We see SpaceX as a rare business: led by a truly exceptional person, technically exceptional, and operating in sectors that are crucial, and with long-term potential,” she added.
The investment gives Rinehart exposure to one of the world’s most closely watched technology companies.
SpaceX began trading publicly on Friday after raising $75 billion in what was billed as the largest IPO on record. Shares surged nearly 20% in their first day of trading.
On Monday, SpaceX announced that the underwriters had exercised a greenshoe option, increasing the amount raised to more than $85 billion.
SpaceX closed nearly 20% higher on Monday, lifting its market capitalization to over $2 trillion.
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