Valor Equity Partners, a venture capital firm notable for its early investments in Space Exploration Technologies Corp.—SpaceX—has distributed shares of the company worth $8.5 billion to its limited partners, according to a Form 4 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The in-kind distribution comes at a time when distributions from alternative investment strategies to LPs have been sluggish—but the distribution also highlights the growing disparity between top- and bottom-quartile venture capital managers.
Despite going public, many early SpaceX backers are subject to lockup periods. The initial lockup portion expired on August 6, with 17 separate release tranches rolling out through 2027.
Valor—officially Valor Management LLC—is led by longtime Elon Musk ally Antonio Gracias, who also sits on the board of SpaceX and previously served on the board of directors of Tesla. Gracias and Valor have long backed many of Musk’s companies, including Neuralink, xAI and the Boring Co.
Valor has been invested in SpaceX since 2008 and holds more company stock than any investor other that Musk. Valor owned 564 million shares in SpaceX through more than a dozen funds and vehicles prior to the company’s initial public offering in June, according to SpaceX’s Form S-1 prospectus.
According to Valor’s most recent Form 13F, Valor held 503 million shares in SpaceX as of June 30, with a market value of $86 billion. SpaceX began trading on June 12.
The public pension funds that have disclosed investments with Valor include the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, the New York City Board of Education Retirement System, the Hartford Municipal Employees’ Retirement Fund, and the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System, according to data from Pitchbook.
CalSTRS, in a Form 13F filing, reported adding 609,382 shares of SpaceX worth $104 million as of June 30. In the period ending June 30, several other public pension funds added significant holdings of SpaceX, including the State of Wisconsin Investment Board with 91,000 shares and the Employees Retirement System of Texas with 250,000 shares.
Tags: SpaceX, Venture Capital