Meet The Key Allies Of Elon Musk Set To Turn Billionaires After SpaceX IPO

SpaceX's upcoming IPO is all but guaranteed to make the world's richest man a trillionaire, but Elon Musk isn't the only one to see enormous fortunes created from the highly anticipated public offering. 

Several of his key lieutenants, including SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen, will be billionaires if the rocket and AI company prices at a valuation of $2 trillion, a target previously reported by Bloomberg. 

Still, their fortunes will be dwarfed by Musk's, who has concentrated ownership and voting power in SpaceX. At the $2 trillion valuation, Shotwell's roughly $2 billion holding in SpaceX will be a quarter of a percent the size of Musk's stake, even though she was among the company's first employees.

Aside from Musk, the individual with the largest directly held position reported on the company's prospectus is Luke Nosek, a co-founder of PayPal and an early institutional investor in SpaceX. He holds a stake worth $2.5 billion at a $1.03 trillion valuation, the figure that the Bloomberg Billionaires Index currently uses to value SpaceX after it merged with xAI in February. That could change after SpaceX prices its initial public offering, expected June 11, with trading starting the following day.

A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Here's a look at the newest SpaceX billionaires:

Gwynne Shotwell

Age: 62
Title: President, Chief Operating Officer and Director
Current SpaceX stake: $1 billion 
Valuation at $2 trillion IPO target: $2 billion

One of SpaceX's earliest hires, Shotwell joined the company in 2002. Initially brought on to manage sales for SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket, she was promoted to president and COO in 2008.

Shotwell has frequently been the face of SpaceX as Musk manages his other companies, representing the firm at industry events. An Illinois native, she attended Northwestern University where she studied mechanical engineering and applied mathematics. After getting her masters degree, she spent 10 years at Aerospace Corp., focusing on thermal analysis and small spacecraft design. She then moved to Microcosm Inc., another aerospace firm, before meeting Musk in 2002 and joining SpaceX just a few months after it was founded. 

Shotwell owns 12.4 million SpaceX shares directly and through two trusts. She's also been awarded 4.7 million stock options, only a portion of which have already vested. Her total compensation last year was $85.8 million, according to Wednesday's prospectus.

"I love working for Elon," Shotwell said in a March interview with Time magazine. "He's really quite funny. He gives me the freedom and flexibility to do my job."

Bret Johnsen

Age: 57
Title: Chief Financial Officer
Current SpaceX stake: $695 million
Valuation at $2 trillion IPO target: $1.4 billion

Johnsen joined SpaceX as CFO in 2011 after spending time in finance roles at other tech companies, including nearly a decade at Broadcom Inc. and semiconductor firm Mindspeed Technologies Inc.

Despite being one of the world's largest closely held companies, SpaceX has long been tight-lipped with investors about its operations and financial performance. 

Johnsen has played a large role in managing those investor relationships, serving as the main point person for answering questions and coordinating stock sales.

Johnsen was the one who outlined SpaceX's reasoning behind its decision to go public in a December 2025 message to company staff. "The thinking is that if we execute brilliantly and the markets cooperate, a public offering could raise a significant amount of capital," he wrote.

A graduate of the University of Southern California, Johnsen is a trustee of the school and has said he continues to tailgate at USC sporting events with his college friends. His total pay last year was $9.8 million, according to the prospectus.

Luke Nosek

Age: 50
Title: Director
Current SpaceX stake: $2.5 billion
Valuation at $2 trillion IPO target: $5.3 billion

Nosek was an early venture investor in SpaceX in 2008, when he also joined the board. 

His ties to Musk go back to the PayPal days, where Nosek was a co-founder and vice president of marketing and strategy. A native of Poland, Nosek immigrated to the US and attended the University of Illinois, where he met some of his future PayPal co-founders. Following the payment system's 2001 sale to eBay Inc., 

Nosek started Founders Fund with Peter Thiel and Ken Howery. After spearheading Founders Fund's investment in SpaceX, he left in 2017 to start his own company, Gigafund. The venture firm has invested more than $1 billion in SpaceX, as well as backing Neuralink and the Boring Co.

A close friend of Musk, Nosek now lives in Austin, where he and his wife are active in Texas politics. Nosek was also on the board of AI research company DeepMind, which he once tried to buy with Musk. It ultimately sold to Google in a deal overseen by fellow SpaceX board member Don Harrison.

Nosek directly holds almost 25 million shares of Class A stock and another 8 million through Nosek Capital. Similar to Musk, Nosek has pledged nearly 2.4 million SpaceX shares as collateral to secure loans.

Antonio Gracias

Age: 55
Title: Director
Current SpaceX stake: $5.9 billion
Valuation at $2 trillion IPO target: $11.5 billion

Gracias is the founder of Valor Equity Partners, a Chicago-based investment firm. He's been a reliable backer of Musk's companies for decades. Gracias met Musk through David Sacks, a classmate of his at University of Chicago Law School who worked with Musk at PayPal. 

Valor first invested in Tesla Inc. in 2005, and became a backer of SpaceX soon after. Valor funds and investment vehicles overseen by Gracias control 7.3% of SpaceX's Class A shares and hold a roughly 4% economic stake in the rocket company overall, according to Bloomberg calculations. 

Valor and Gracias didn't respond to requests for comment.

Last year, Gracias joined Musk's federal cost-cutting effort, leading a DOGE immigration task force working with the Department of Homeland Security.

Gracias serves on the boards of several Musk-controlled companies, including Neuralink and the Boring Co., and served on Tesla's board from 2007 to 2021. 

He owned about 1.3 million shares of the electric car manufacturer's stock as of June 30, 2021, according to Tesla's 2021 proxy statement, the most recent annual filing detailing Gracias' holdings. Assuming he hadn't trimmed his stake, that would currently be worth more than $1.5 billion after adjusting for a 2022 stock split.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)