In 2008, just days before one of SpaceX’s early rocket launches failed to reach orbit, Peter Thiel’s fund wrote the first institutional check into the nascent, six-year-old startup.

Now, as Elon Musk’s rocket and AI company goes public today at a nearly $2 trillion valuation, the fund’s stake is worth a staggering $67 billion — making that first check, and the additional $600 million Founders Fund invested over the following decade, into one of the most lucrative in venture capital history.

The company started trading just before noon E.T., with an opening price of $150, which is the figure Forbes used for all of the stakes in this story. It soon popped up about 20% in the first few minutes of trading. As the largest single shareholder, the IPO has now minted Musk as the world’s first trillionaire. Thousands of his employees are now millionaires and the fortunes of many of his billionaire colleagues and investors have soared.

That doesn’t mean everyone can cash out immediately. Most companies going public put restrictions on insiders and investors from selling shares for at least six months to avoid painful share price slides from major shareholders dumping stock — a problem for previous tech IPOs like Facebook, where shares slumped 31% below the opening price in the 12 months after its listing, according to data from bank Truist.

To prevent that, SpaceX has imposed a complicated “lockup period” that will allow limited sales for some shareholders. Those restrictions lift in December for everyone but Musk and “certain significant investors,” who will have to wait until June 2027. Those investors have not been identified but are likely to include some of his early venture capital backers.

Among VCs, Founders Fund has one of the largest known stakes. It has been listed for years as one of the top shareholders along with Musk and Google in corporate filings, but it fell below the 5% disclosure requirement shortly before SpaceX published its S1 prospectus. Thiel’s fund now holds a 3.5% stake, according to sources familiar with the financing. Thiel is ranked at No. 5 on the 2026 Forbes Midas List of the best venture capital investors.

“I think the core lesson that everyone has learned is never bet against Elon, it's just a bad idea,” Founders Fund partner Trae Stephens said in an interview with Bloomberg earlier in June. “I think getting the opportunity for people to see........

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