137 Ventures owns more than 1% of SpaceX worth ~$30B after 15 years of conviction buying

137 Ventures' $30B SpaceX Position Caps 15-Year Conviction Play

137 Ventures now owns more than 1% of SpaceX, worth roughly $30 billion at the company's $1.77 trillion IPO valuation. The firm accumulated this stake over 15 years through repeated rounds of conviction buying—investing roughly $20 million at a $200 million valuation into what became the world's most valuable private company.

Justin Fishner-Wolfson, 137 Ventures founder, said in a recent interview that the position "will most likely define my career."

The scale of the return is notable in venture history. Early-stage investors in Google, Microsoft, and Amazon typically exited at IPO or shortly after, distributing shares before the companies' market caps expanded further. SpaceX's IPO at a $2.2 trillion valuation—already comparable to Amazon's current market cap—means 137 Ventures held through the entire value creation arc rather than taking chips off the table during earlier private rounds.

For context, Masayoshi Son's SoftBank invested $20 million into Alibaba in 2000 for a stake that reached a $75 billion valuation by the company's 2014 IPO. That remains one of venture's benchmark returns on a similar investment thesis, though the SpaceX position compounds over a longer horizon and to a larger absolute scale.

The firm's strategy of secondaries and follow-on investments in proven winners contrasts with traditional venture's "spray and pray" model. 137 Ventures placed multiple bets into SpaceX across several financing rounds, each time doubling down on an existing conviction rather than chasing new opportunities.