ProPublica published on June 18 an investigation drawing on a private SpaceX investor list unsealed this month after the outlet litigated — ultimately winning at the Delaware Supreme Court — to have the records made public. The documents concern Tomales Bay Capital, run by Iqbaljit Kahlon, a long-time SpaceX insider who packaged the company’s stock into funds and sold pieces to outside investors before the IPO. The newly public list reveals at least a dozen investors with addresses in mainland China, Hong Kong, or Russia who acquired stakes in SpaceX between 2018 and 2021, with individual investments ranging from $800,000 to $40 million. The most notable name is David Su, co-founder of the Beijing venture firm MPCi, whose entity invested $15 million in 2020; MPCi backed Chinese satellite companies the US government later sanctioned for allegedly assisting the Wagner Group and, separately, Iran during the war. MPCi was also named by China’s Ministry of Science and Technology as a partner in a state-backed aerospace development initiative. MPCi said in a statement that Su “has not received any nonpublic information of SpaceX” and described him as a Singapore citizen residing there; a 2024 profile noted he had “spent almost 100 per cent of his time in China over the last 20 years.” A 2021 pitch document shows Kahlon promising a Chinese investor “visits to SpaceX” and “opportunities to interview with SpaceX’s CFO.” SpaceX did not respond to questions.
The records also detail a Russian-linked investment: a Delaware LLC called HAL9001 Partners Fund I whose incorporation was signed by Roman Sobachevskiy — a venture capitalist whose company was recently fined hundreds of millions of dollars by the Treasury Department for managing a separate investment on behalf of a sanctioned Russian oligarch. Sobachevskiy has not been personally accused of wrongdoing. On the Qatari side, funds affiliated with Bracket Capital invested approximately $48 million from 2017 to 2020; an email from Kahlon to SpaceX’s CFO describes Bracket as having money from the Qatari royal family. Other investors on Kahlon’s ledger include Indian politician Abhishek Singhvi and former US education secretary Betsy DeVos, alongside numerous shell companies whose ultimate owners remain undisclosed. Tomales Bay Capital’s lawyer said investors are passive limited partners who received no non-public technical information about SpaceX. The revelations land days after SpaceX completed the largest IPO in history — making Musk the world’s first trillionaire — and barred China and Hong Kong investors from buying IPO shares, citing “regulatory and compliance risks,” while the same investors had been able to buy in quietly years earlier when the company was private.