The mystery investor who never sold a single SpaceX share — and is now sitting on a $20 billion jackpot

As SpaceX moves toward what many are calling the listing of the century, Wall Street is watching closely to see whether early investors in the rocket company will finally cash in on their long-held bets.

Amid that anticipation, The New York Times spotlighted one venture investor who may be quietly smiling more than anyone else.

That investor is Justin Fishner-Wolfson, 44, who runs an unmarked office called 137 Ventures in San Francisco.

Fishner-Wolfson's connection to SpaceX stretches back to 2008.

He was 26 at the time and working as the most junior employee on the SpaceX desk at Founders Fund, the firm run by legendary Wall Street investor Peter Thiel. Back then, SpaceX's vision of sending reusable rockets to Mars was said to sit somewhere between a dream and a joke.

SpaceX, founded in 2002, was so obscure at the time that hand-drawn sketches of future rockets were pinned to the whiteboard at the Founders Fund office.

Fishner-Wolfson was not immediately convinced. In August 2008, he watched a live broadcast of SpaceX's third reusable rocket launch from the Marshall Islands — and saw it burst into flames and crash just two minutes after liftoff. At that point, he had already committed $20 million (30.4 billion won) — 10 percent of a fund he had helped build — to SpaceX.

His superiors, however, held their nerve and kept backing the company. That $20 million investment has since grown to be worth billions of dollars, The New York Times reported.

Three years later, Fishner-Wolfson struck out on his own and founded 137 Ventures. He invested in startups including ride-hailing giant Uber, but SpaceX remained his signature bet — he even brought in a crane to install a used SpaceX rocket engine at the entrance to his office.

From 2011, Fishner-Wolfson spent 15 years buying SpaceX shares whenever he could. He now holds more than 1 percent of the company's total equity — a stake worth around $20 billion (30.4 trillion won) based on SpaceX's expected IPO valuation of $1.77 trillion.

He has not sold a single share.

"Who Musk is dating at any given point has very little to do with the SpaceX business," Fishner-Wolfson said.

He also described himself as someone who has achieved a degree of mental discipline through Zen practice.

The SpaceX listing that stands to deliver Fishner-Wolfson his windfall is also widely expected to make Elon Musk the first trillionaire in human history.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index on Friday, Musk's net worth is currently estimated at $971 billion (1,476 trillion won). The index said his net worth rose by $274 billion from the previous day after valuing his SpaceX stake at the IPO price of $135 per share.

Musk will retain 84 percent of SpaceX's voting rights after the listing through dual-class shares and other mechanisms.

He also holds roughly 11 percent of Tesla, excluding restricted stock units tied to performance conditions (96 million shares). Even a modest post-IPO rise in SpaceX's share price would push Musk past the trillion-dollar threshold — measured in US dollars.

Musk was already the world's wealthiest person before the SpaceX listing. The combined fortunes of the next three — Oracle founder Larry Ellison in second place, Alphabet co-founder Larry Page in third, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin in fourth — still fall short of Musk's wealth alone.

Musk is best known as the founder and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. He also founded tunneling startup The Boring Company and brain-implant manufacturer Neuralink, and launched AI startup xAI, which recently merged with SpaceX.

“6년 후면 50살, 그땐 용기 안 날 것 같아서” 생선구이 집 차린 女배우

https://biz.heraldcorp.com/article/10770289