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Cathie Wood just doubled down on rockets. ARK Invest purchased 3,291,184 shares of SpaceX, further cementing the Elon Musk-founded company as the single largest position in the ARK Venture Fund.
The buy comes at a particularly interesting moment. SpaceX filed a confidential draft S-1 on April 1, preparing for what could be the most anticipated IPO in recent memory, with the company targeting a Nasdaq debut and a valuation that would make most publicly traded companies look like lemonade stands.
The scale of the bet
SpaceX already represented 11.38% of ARK Venture Fund’s net assets as of May 31. That figure was even higher earlier this year, at 17.02% as of March 31, suggesting either some rebalancing occurred or other holdings grew relative to the position.
ARK first entered SpaceX in late 2023, back when the company’s valuation sat below $200 billion. The fund increased its stake throughout 2025 and picked up additional exposure through SpaceX’s merger with xAI in early 2026. By 2024, SpaceX’s valuation had already climbed to $350 billion, and the trajectory since then has been nothing short of vertical.
Here’s the thing about ARK Venture Fund (ARKVX): it exists specifically to give retail investors a seat at the private market table. Historically, pre-IPO stakes in companies like SpaceX were reserved for pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and the kind of people who summer as a verb. Wood’s fund changes that calculus, though investors should understand they’re buying into illiquid positions that don’t trade on public exchanges until the company actually goes public.
The IPO everyone is watching
SpaceX’s targeted IPO has been projected at a staggering $1.75 trillion valuation. To put that in perspective, that would make SpaceX one of the most valuable companies on the planet at the moment of its debut, roughly in the neighborhood of tech giants that took decades to reach similar market caps.
ARK’s internal models are even more bullish looking further out. The firm’s base case projects SpaceX reaching an enterprise value of approximately $2.5 trillion by 2030. The bull case stretches to around $3.1 trillion, while even the bear case sits at $1.7 trillion, which, notably, is still close to the IPO valuation itself.
What this means for investors
First, the concentration risk. Having a single private holding represent over 11% of a fund’s net assets is a bold structural choice. If SpaceX’s IPO goes well, ARK Venture Fund holders could see meaningful appreciation in their NAV. If the debut stumbles or the valuation gets compressed during public market scrutiny, that same concentration works in reverse.
Second, the liquidity dynamic matters. Private market shares don’t trade like public equities. The price ARK paid for these shares reflects private market negotiations, not the continuous price discovery of a public exchange.
Third, there’s the broader signal about private markets bleeding into retail portfolios. ARK’s entire venture thesis is that the most meaningful wealth creation happens before companies go public. The data from SpaceX’s valuation growth, from under $200 billion to a potential $1.75 trillion listing, supports that argument rather persuasively. But past performance in private markets comes with a massive asterisk: you can’t sell when you want to, and valuations between funding rounds are more art than science.
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