Cathie Wood’s $1B SpaceX Bet Faces Its Moment of Truth

SpaceX is set to begin trading on the Nasdaq on June 12 under the ticker SPCX, in what is shaping up to be the largest IPO in U.S. history at a targeted valuation of $1.77 trillion. Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest sits at the front of that line. The ARK Venture Fund, a $1 billion interval fund inside the firm, has been the largest single private holder of SpaceX for some time, with the position sitting at 17.02% of net assets as of March 31, 2026.

For Wood, the pricing is the clearest market test yet of an investing style she has defended through a 67% drawdown in 2022 and years of mockery for backing Elon Musk when the rest of the market bailed. The SpaceX holding was first built in late 2023, filings show, when the company was valued at under $200 billion, and the position has since grown through additional purchases and through the fund’s stake in xAI, which merged with SpaceX in February at a combined valuation of $1.25 trillion. ARK Invest’s broader book, which the firm says manages roughly $16 billion, also holds the other two names expected to follow SpaceX into the public markets, OpenAI and Anthropic. The venture fund’s answer to its critics is set to print on the tape at 9:30 a.m. Thursday.

How ARK Built the SpaceX Position It Cannot Sell Yet

ARK’s venture fund bought its first SpaceX shares in late 2023 at a valuation of under $200 billion, the firm has disclosed, and the position has re-rated with almost every private round since. ARK’s own guide to the SpaceX IPO lays out the trajectory in print. The fund added to the stake in 2025, then gained additional exposure through its holding in xAI, the AI lab Musk folded into SpaceX in February in a deal that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion.

As of March 31, 2026, SpaceX represented 17.02% of net assets in the fund, the largest position in a portfolio that also includes OpenAI, Anthropic, Neuralink, Databricks, Replit, Crusoe, Radiant, Boom, Lambda and Discord. The mark on the position has stepped up in real time, from $350 billion at the end of 2024, to $800 billion at the end of 2025, to $1.25 trillion post-merger, to a $1.75 trillion IPO target, to a $1.77 trillion sticker if the EchoStar spectrum and Cursor transactions close, per the latest SpaceX S-1. The fund holds the position directly on the cap table, not through secondary intermediaries, special purpose vehicles or structured products that add fee layers. That direct access is the reason the fund’s NAV has moved with the private re-ratings, and is also the reason the position is now about to be marked to the public price for the first time.

The rest of the fund’s book, spanning more than 50 private companies in total, gives the bet some ballast beyond SpaceX, but the public market will set the price on the largest one. Per the firm’s own prospectus language, the fund targets roughly 80% private exposure over the long term and rebalances toward that target as private marks re-rate. That target is the lens the IPO will be read through.

The 2022 Wipeout That Forced a New Strategy

The venture fund sits inside a firm whose public face looks very different than it did four years ago. ARK Invest’s flagship ETFs delivered returns of more than 150% in 2020 and raised billions in 2021, drawing in the meme-stock crowd and the boomer set alike that a 2020 profile of Wood in Business Insider singled out. The same ETFs then lost 67% in 2022, when inflation brought on by pandemic-era government stimulus forced central banks into a rate-hike cycle. The firm’s flagship ETF assets have since dropped by roughly two-thirds from their peak, a stretch the press labelled with the kind of phrase Wood now has to wince at.

Wood’s response in 2022 was to launch a private-market vehicle the firm had never offered retail investors before. The ARK Venture Fund, structured as an interval fund, opened that year with direct cap-table access to the kind of private companies that were driving ARK’s public research, and it has also taken positions in the prediction market Kalshi and the next-generation computing company Tenstorrent.

The fund has averaged a 29% gain each year since it launched, a number that covers both the public and private marks of the portfolio and includes the rocket-fuel re-rating of SpaceX. The venture fund is the only line of the firm with material exposure to the SpaceX re-rating, since SpaceX has never been part of the public ETFs. That 29% is therefore the line of evidence ARK uses to argue that its private-market access has done what the public ETFs could not, and it is the number most likely to be quoted in the next pitch deck.

The SpaceX S-1 makes the contrast sharper. Starlink is the only profitable division inside the SpaceX business today, the launch business lost $619 million on an operating basis in 2025, and the xAI arm bled $6.35 billion in the same window, producing a company-wide net loss of $4.94 billion on $18.67 billion in revenue. ARK’s venture fund is buying into that combined entity at $1.75 trillion, and the public will be invited to mark it on Thursday.

An IPO, Then Two More, Then the Real Test

SpaceX is only the first of three mega-listings ARK has been positioning for. The fund’s other top holdings, OpenAI and Anthropic, are also expected to follow SpaceX into the public markets, and Anthropic confirmed on June 1 that it had confidentially filed its own S-1, in what is shaping up to be the densest cluster of trillion-dollar private-to-public events the U.S. has seen in years (see the Anthropic filing write-up for the structure catch). OpenAI is reported to be preparing its own filing in the coming weeks.

Wood has framed the moment in characteristically large terms. On a recent YouTube livestream, where she tied the SpaceX thesis to developments on the moon and Mars, she called the alignment of SpaceX, xAI, OpenAI and Anthropic in one manager’s portfolio the convergence of a lifetime. Brett Winton, ARK’s chief futurist, has argued the same point from the firm’s research side, pointing to a pre-COVID ARK report that predicted AI would change the way software is written and noting the thesis is being realised now as a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity.

That three-IPO sequence is also the reason the question around ARK has shifted from conviction to execution. The fund will not be able to sell any of its SpaceX shares during the standard lockup period, with Musk himself accepting a 366-day lockup, and other insiders on a staggered schedule that lets up to 20% of locked stock trade after the first post-listing quarterly report, with another 10% freed if the price sits more than 30% above the offer. New cash flowing into the venture fund during the lockup will be deployed into other private companies, accelerating the rebalance toward the fund’s long-term 80% private target.

This is the convergence of a lifetime.

Cathie Wood, ARK Invest CEO and CIO, on a recent YouTube livestream.

Why the Bet Stays Hard for Outsiders to Copy

The venture fund’s edge is timing, not selection. ARK bought SpaceX in late 2023 at a private valuation under $200 billion, a mark that the public is only being invited to test three years later at a sticker nine times higher, per the latest SpaceX IPO pricing filing on CNBC. The position is held directly on the cap table, not through a special purpose vehicle, and that is the part retail investors cannot replicate at the IPO itself.

The economics of a $1.77 trillion listing are stacked against the small buyer. SpaceX is offering 555.6 million shares at a fixed price of $135 each, raising about $75 billion, with underwriters holding an option on an additional 83.33 million shares worth $11.2 billion, and SpaceX has reserved up to 5% of the deal for a direct share program for certain employees and people. In an offering of this size, allocations go first to institutional accounts, and the price the median retail investor pays is the one that prints on day one, not the one in the S-1. The venture fund’s pre-IPO exposure sits inside an interval fund, a structure that limits redemptions to once a quarter and can throttle them if too many holders try to exit at once, a feature that protects the position in volatile windows and limits the holder’s flexibility at the same time.

Starlink, the cash engine of the SpaceX business, has passed 10 million active subscribers globally as of early 2026, and the company conducted 165 orbital launches in 2025, deploying roughly 85% of all spacecraft launched that year. Per ARK’s research, the company has cut its launch costs by about 95% since 2008, from roughly $15,600 per kilogram to under $1,000 per kilogram via Falcon 9, the cost curve that anchors the bull case.

Morningstar’s $780 Billion Counter

The clearest pushback so far has come from the research community. Morningstar opened coverage of SpaceX with a fair value estimate of $780 billion, roughly 2.2 times lower than the $1.77 trillion asking valuation. Analyst Nicolas Owens anchored about $611 billion of that mark to the launch and Starlink businesses, then layered on roughly $170 billion of probability-weighted value for the AI work. At the $1.77 trillion ask, the stock would trade near 95 times trailing revenue, a multiple usually reserved for early-stage software rather than a 24-year-old hardware company, and Owens flagged the related-party nature of the xAI merger and Musk’s voting grip as reasons to discount the rest.

The thesis is not just about SpaceX. ARK itself is also under review at Morningstar, where Robby Greengold, who covers the firm, has said ARK is known for high conviction in every one of its holdings and a focus on companies with a high potential for both success and failure, and has noted that the range of outcomes is wide. A read of ARK’s SpaceX model from the Motley Fool lands in a similar place, noting that even ARK’s own analysts model Starlink and Starshield revenue at $165 billion by 2030, up from $11.4 billion in 2025.

Greengold also said there continues to be concerns about ARK’s approach to risk management, though the firm did hire a chief risk officer last year, Dan Rodriguez, who previously worked at P. Schoenfeld and Point72. The risk critique tracks the one Musk himself has faced, and both Wood and Musk have spent the past several years asking skeptics to trust the long-term vision through bouts of volatility. The question the IPO will answer is whether the public market, in its first few weeks of trading, is willing to do the same, and the venture fund’s 17.02% position will move in real time with the print, on the way up and on the way down.

• 17.02% – SpaceX weight in ARK Venture Fund net assets, March 31, 2026
• $780 billion – Morningstar fair value estimate for SpaceX
• 95x – implied trailing revenue multiple at the $1.77 trillion IPO price
• $4.94 billion – SpaceX net loss in 2025 on $18.67 billion in revenue
• 10 million – Starlink subscribers globally as of early 2026

The Stakes for a $16 Billion Manager

If the IPO prices where the company is asking, Wood will have the kind of market-validated marquee trade that justifies an entire asset manager. The venture fund will still be locked in for the standard period, but the mark on the position will step up to the public price, and the NAV of the fund will move with it. The opportunity cost of having waited will fall on every investor who watched the rocket liftoff from the sidelines, and the $75B all-primary deal terms are what makes that opportunity cost visible to everyone. The bull case is also where the venture fund is most concentrated: if the public market agrees with ARK’s research that Starlink can grow to a $165 billion revenue business by 2030 and that orbital data centers become a real line item in the AI capex boom, the $1.75 trillion ask is the start, not the ceiling.

Wood’s team is not waiting for the tape to decide for them. On the same livestream where she made the convergence argument, she said her deputies would certainly be out there educating investors on the long-term thesis, a posture that doubles as a marketing plan for the venture fund and a defense of the wider ARK house view. The public market will set the price, and on whether the answer at the open is closer to $1.77 trillion or $780 billion rests the credibility of the longest-running Musk trade on Wall Street.

The range of outcomes is wide.

Robby Greengold, Morningstar analyst who covers ARK Invest.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does the SpaceX IPO happen?

SpaceX is set to begin trading on the Nasdaq on June 12 under the ticker SPCX, after the company filed its S-1 on May 20, began its roadshow on June 4, and priced shares at $135 on June 11. The offering is targeting a raise of about $75 billion.

How much SpaceX does ARK Invest own?

The ARK Venture Fund held SpaceX at 17.02% of net assets as of March 31, 2026, the largest position in the fund. The fund first bought into SpaceX in late 2023, filings show, when the company was valued at under $200 billion, and added to the position in 2025.

What is the ARK Venture Fund?

The ARK Venture Fund is an interval fund, a closed-end vehicle that allows limited quarterly redemptions, launched in 2022 with a strategy of direct cap-table access to private technology companies. The fund has averaged a 29% gain each year since launch and also holds OpenAI, Anthropic, Neuralink, Databricks, Kalshi and Tenstorrent.

Is the $1.77 trillion SpaceX valuation justified?

ARK’s own research argues yes, anchored to Starlink’s growth curve, the 95% drop in launch costs since 2008 and the option value of orbital data centers. Morningstar opened coverage with a fair value estimate of $780 billion, roughly 2.2 times lower, and analyst Nicolas Owens called the asking multiple unsupported by the financials. Public investors will set the price on day one.

When can ARK sell its SpaceX shares?

After the standard lockup expires. Musk himself accepted a 366-day lockup, and other insiders are on a staggered schedule that lets up to 20% of locked stock trade after the first post-listing quarterly report, with another 10% freed if the price sits more than 30% above the offer. Until then, the position stays on the venture fund’s books at the public price.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice. Pre-IPO and newly public investments carry substantial risk, including from valuation uncertainty, lockup dynamics and concentration. Consult a qualified financial professional before making any investment decision. Figures are accurate as of publication on June 11, 2026, and SpaceX deal terms may change during the roadshow.