{"id":12768,"date":"2026-06-18T19:38:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T19:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/before-spacex-ipo-investors-in-china-secretly-acquired-stakes\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T19:38:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T19:38:31","slug":"before-spacex-ipo-investors-in-china-secretly-acquired-stakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/before-spacex-ipo-investors-in-china-secretly-acquired-stakes\/","title":{"rendered":"Before SpaceX IPO, investors in China secretly acquired stakes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Before SpaceX IPO, Investors in China Secretly Acquired A businessman with ties to Chinese military contractors was among the overseas investors who acquired stakes in SpaceX while it was still a private company. An entity linked to the Qatari royal family also took a stake.<\/p>\n

The new details come from a\u00a0private investor list\u00a0obtained by ProPublica that sheds light on a particularly delicate issue for Elon Musk\u2019s rocket company: which people in countries like China bought into the company, and how. SpaceX built its business off sensitive U.S. government work like making spy satellites for the Pentagon. While there is no ban on Chinese investment in U.S. military contractors, such investment is heavily regulated.<\/p>\n

In a sign of its sensitivity to the concerns, SpaceX barred investors from China and Hong Kong from buying shares in its initial public offering last week due to \u201cregulatory and compliance risks,\u201d\u00a0Bloomberg reported. The U.S. government alleges that China has a strategy of using investments in sensitive industries for espionage and to get access to cutting-edge technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s IPO last week was the largest ever, making Musk the world\u2019s first trillionaire. Musk has extensive business interests in China, where Tesla builds many of its cars.<\/p>\n

The new records detail at least a dozen investors with addresses in mainland China, Hong Kong or Russia who acquired stakes in SpaceX years ago through a middleman firm in the U.S. called Tomales Bay Capital. The investments are relatively small, ranging from $800,000 to $40 million, and were made between 2018 and 2021.<\/p>\n

One investment came from an entity owned by David Su, the co-founder of the prominent Beijing venture capital firm MPCi. The Su entity invested $15 million in a SpaceX fund in 2020, according to the investor list. It was not Su\u2019s only foray into the space industry; his company has been\u00a0a high-profile backer\u00a0of some of SpaceX\u2019s Chinese competitors. Two satellite companies that Su\u2019s firm invested in were\u00a0sanctioned by the U.S. government\u00a0for allegedly assisting the notorious Russian mercenary organization the Wagner Group. One of the companies was\u00a0sanctioned again\u00a0last month for allegedly helping Iran attack U.S. military forces during the war.\u00a0<\/p>\n

MPCi has also worked with Chinese government investment funds. Last year, the website for China\u2019s Ministry of Science and Technology\u00a0named Su\u2019s firm\u00a0as a partner in a state-backed effort to develop the country\u2019s aerospace industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is no evidence that Su did anything improper. But the key question from the U.S. government\u2019s perspective would be whether China-based investors got access to nonpublic information about SpaceX\u2019s technology or strategies, said Sarah Bauerle Danzman, an Indiana University professor who has worked for the State Department scrutinizing foreign investments. \u201cIf an investor has conflicts of interests with other companies in China \u2014 if they could feed that information to competitors \u2014 it could be a national security concern,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a statement, MPCi said that Su \u201chas not received any nonpublic information of SpaceX.\u201d The statement described Su as \u201ca Singapore citizen who resides in Singapore,\u201d adding: \u201cMPCi is a brand name with different teams and funds. Mr. Su is responsible for the US dollar funds.\u201d According to a\u00a02024 profile\u00a0of him, Su \u201cspent almost 100 per cent of his time in China over the last 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lawyer for Tomales Bay Capital said in a statement that the firm \u201chas not provided any non-public, sensitive information regarding SpaceX to investors.\u201d He said the investors are passive limited partners: \u201cAside from fund financials that include quarterly valuations, Tomales Bay\u2019s investors have not received any further information regarding SpaceX.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vast majority, if not all, of the investors included on the unsealed Tomales Bay investor list are not citizens of any foreign adversary, including Russia or China,\u201d said the lawyer, Ryan Stonerock, \u201cand certainly none of them are agents of Russia or China, or any other foreign adversary.\u201d He added that some of the investors \u201cmay have mailing addresses listed\u201d in Russia or China but do not actually live there \u201cand are in fact citizens and residents of the United States or other countries that are not foreign adversaries.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

SpaceX did not respond to questions. One of the Chinese space companies sanctioned by the U.S. government, Spacety,\u00a0previously denied\u00a0providing support to the Wagner Group.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All the investors located in China or Russia that ProPublica identified appeared to be either wealthy businesspeople or their children.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The new documents come from a corporate dispute in Delaware involving Tomales Bay Capital. The court records were unsealed this month after ProPublica moved to make them public, with the help of attorneys from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the law firm Shaw Keller. Tomales Bay Capital appealed to the Delaware Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of ProPublica.<\/p>\n

Tomales Bay Capital is run by an investor named Iqbaljit Kahlon, who has long been close to SpaceX\u2019s leadership and even involved in the company\u2019s operations. SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen, who\u2019s worked there for 15 years, testified that Kahlon \u201chas been with the company in one form or fashion longer than I have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before SpaceX went public, Kahlon made a fortune by acting as a middleman for investors hoping to add the rocket company to their portfolio. His firm regularly bought SpaceX stock, packaged it into investment funds and then charged fees to investors who bought pieces of those funds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a 2021 pitch to one potential investor in China, Kahlon promised special access to SpaceX, including quarterly updates on the company\u2019s business development, \u201cvisits to SpaceX, and the opportunities to interview with Space X\u2019s CFO,\u201d according to the meeting minutes, which later appeared in court records.<\/p>\n

While\u00a0ProPublica\u00a0and\u00a0other outlets\u00a0have previously reported on the existence of Chinese investors in SpaceX, the identities of most of the rocket company\u2019s investors have been closely guarded. The Kahlon investor list adds hundreds of names to the public picture of who owns SpaceX. The list details investments in several Tomales Bay Capital funds that have acquired SpaceX stock; it is possible that some of the funds own stakes in other companies too.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of the SpaceX investors on Kahlon\u2019s ledger are easy to identify: the Indian politician Abhishek Singhvi; Betsy DeVos, the former U.S. secretary of education; a British Virgin Islands company owned by Indonesian billionaires. But others on the list are shell companies whose ultimate owners remain hidden.<\/p>\n

One such company is a Delaware LLC called HAL9001 Partners Fund I, which invested roughly $10 million in a SpaceX fund in 2020. The\u00a0incorporation documents\u00a0for HAL9001 were signed by the venture capitalist Roman Sobachevskiy. The Treasury Department recently fined a company that was co-owned by Sobachevskiy hundreds of millions of dollars for managing a different investment on behalf of a\u00a0sanctioned Russian oligarch. Sobachevskiy has not been personally accused of wrongdoing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Tomales Bay Capital spokesperson said that the oligarch \u201chad no involvement with the investment.\u201d Sobachevskiy did not respond to questions, including who put up the money for the SpaceX investment.<\/p>\n

The records also shed some light on the connections between SpaceX and Qatar. Funds affiliated with Bracket Capital \u2014 an investment firm with offices in Los Angeles, London and Qatar \u2014 invested about $48 million through a series of deals from 2017 through 2020, the documents show. Bracket has money from the Qatari royal family, according to an email that Kahlon sent to SpaceX\u2019s CFO. The ledger also lists Doha, Qatar, as the address for a mysterious entity called AM FIG Cayman Limited, which invested around $10 million in 2020.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The documents do not specify whether the Bracket investments were made on behalf of the royal family or some other client. In 2021, as Kahlon was soliciting backers for yet another SpaceX deal, he texted a Bracket employee: \u201cAt the end we can just send Yalda to talk to big guy. We need a bail out lol.\u201d (Yalda Aoukar is Bracket\u2019s co-founder. It\u2019s unclear whether the \u201cbig guy\u201d refers to a member of the royal family and what Kahlon meant by \u201ca bail out.\u201d)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bracket did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

The investments covered in the ledger were tiny percentages of SpaceX but would have generated windfalls. The company\u2019s valuation has exploded in recent years, from $33.3 billion in 2019 to $2.7 trillion as of Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

Last year, ProPublica\u00a0reported on\u00a0SpaceX\u2019s unusual approach to accepting money from Chinese investors. According to\u00a0testimony from the Delaware case, the company allowed Chinese investors to buy stakes in SpaceX so long as the money was routed through the Cayman Islands or other offshore secrecy hubs.\n\n<\/svg><\/p>\n<\/div>\n