- Elon Musk’s private companies are a hot commodity on private markets, with the value of SpaceX, Neuralink, the Boring Company, and xAI shooting up by 45% since last year’s presidential election, according to data by secondary market trading platform Caplight. Yet, as investors in private markets chase shares of Musk’s private companies, Tesla shares have lost around half their value.
While Tesla’s share price has taken a beating recently, a fall from grace one JPMorgan analyst says may have no equal, the value of Elon Musk’s private companies has soared in the four months since Donald Trump won the election.
The cumulative value of SpaceX, Neuralink, the Boring Company, and xAI has shot up 45% on private markets since last November, according to data provided to Fortune by secondary market trading platform Caplight. Musk’s social media company X was not factored into the calculation because of a lack of interest from investors on the secondary market.
Shares of private companies are not listed on stock exchanges, so when early employees or VCs want to offload shares, they do so through a more labored process on the secondary market. Caplight helps facilitate these off-stock market sales by aggregating data on hundreds of brokers and matching institutional investors with brokers, similar to how Zillow matches prospective home buyers to real-estate agents in the housing market.
Leading the rally among Musk’s private companies is his artificial-intelligence company, xAI, which has gained traction among investors looking to capitalize on the latest high-tech advancements. The company’s share price has skyrocketed 110% since the November election, according to Caplight, which has given the startup a valuation of around $96 billion.
The AI company is rumored to be raising a $10 billion funding round at a $75 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported last month. Caplight’s valuation for xAI is higher because of the increased demand from institutional investors outside of those participating in the reported funding round.
Shares of SpaceX have also jumped more than 50% since the election, according to the Caplight data. Worst among Musk’s non-Tesla enterprises was the Boring Company, which experienced a 7.8% decline in value since last year’s election.
In contrast to the stellar performance of his private companies, shares of Musk’s only public company, Tesla, have lost around 50% of their value since peaking at $479.86 in December. Shares of the EV company closed down 3% Thursday at $240 per share.
Private companies have for years been staying private longer, opening up more opportunities to investors in the secondary market. The median company was just under 11 years old at IPO as of 2021, compared to seven years old in 1980, according to Morningstar, and Caplight CEO Javier Avalos said some tech companies, in particular, have remained private for years because of the relative ease of fundraising.
“When you’re talking about companies that are literally building rocket ships, implanting chips in people’s brains, building frontier large language models, it is easier to navigate those against your core mission when you don’t have to answer to the next quarter’s earnings call and the analysts that are going to ask you a lot of questions,” Avalos said.
Although private companies don’t benefit directly from stock sales on the secondary market like they do from a funding round, it’s increasingly common for private companies to execute multiple tender offers per year, where shareholders can offload their holdings. Among Musk’s companies, SpaceX often executes tender offers to help keep investors and employees happy, Avalos said.
“This is an opportunity for shareholders to get some liquidity on their shares, which sort of satisfies what used to be a huge need of going public,” he said. “You needed to go public because your venture capitalists and your early employees were sort of pressuring the company, saying, like, ‘I need liquidity.’”
