Harvard Discloses $2.2 Billion SpaceX Stake After Record IPO

Harvard disclosed a $2.2 billion stake in SpaceX on Friday, making billionaire Elon Musk’s aerospace company by far the largest holding in the Harvard Management Company’s publicly reported stock portfolio.

HMC, which manages Harvard’s endowment, held 12,935,100 shares of SpaceX worth $2.21 billion as of June 30, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The position accounted for more than half of the roughly $4.3 billion in securities disclosed in the filing — and was worth more than all of HMC’s other reported holdings combined.

HMC’s publicly disclosed portfolio more than doubled this quarter, rising roughly 135 percent to $4.26 billion, its largest reported value since at least 2006.

Harvard’s next-largest disclosed position was a roughly $350 million stake in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, making the SpaceX holding more than six times larger.

The filing does not disclose when Harvard acquired the SpaceX shares or how much it paid for them. Because SpaceX was privately held until June, the shares would not previously have appeared in HMC’s quarterly filings.

SpaceX went public on June 12 in the largest initial public offering in history. Shares were initially priced at $135 each, and the company raised a record $75 billion in its debut.

The stock surged after its IPO, briefly reaching an all-time high of roughly $225. By the end of June, when HMC’s holdings were valued for the filing, SpaceX shares were worth about $170 each.

The stock has since retreated: SpaceX was trading at roughly $140 on Friday afternoon. If Harvard still holds the same number of shares, they would be worth about $1.8 billion at that price.

The decline has come as investors weigh the company’s heavy infrastructure spending. SpaceX reported $7.8 billion in second-quarter revenue, up 92 percent from a year earlier, while spending $15.8 billion on capital investments tied to its AI and Starship operations.

Musk has told investors that he intends to boost the company’s data center capacity from 2 gigawatts to as much as 10 gigawatts, positioning the company as a major provider of computing infrastructure.

The investment also gives Harvard a substantial financial tie to Musk, who has repeatedly clashed with the University.

A onetime close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, Musk called in December 2023 for Harvard to be defunded amid backlash against then-University President Claudine Gay following her congressional testimony on campus antisemitism.

“Defunding Harvard is the only thing that will work,” Musk wrote at the time.

The SpaceX stake comes after HMC has increased its exposure to artificial intelligence and semiconductor companies. Last quarter, Harvard purchased 1.1 million shares in Generate Biomedicines, an AI-focused biotechnology company, valued at roughly $14 million at the end of March.

This quarter, HMC opened a nearly $239 million position in Cerebras Systems, an artificial intelligence chipmaker, making it Harvard’s third-largest publicly disclosed holding behind SpaceX and TSMC. HMC also increased its holdings in Nvidia and TSMC.

At the same time, Harvard exited its Ethereum holdings entirely last quarter and cut its stake in Bitcoin, scaling back its exposure to cryptocurrency.

HMC also cut its stake in Booking Holdings, the parent company of Booking.com, by roughly half. Adjusting for a 25-for-1 stock split that took effect in April, Harvard reduced its holdings from the equivalent of 873,200 shares at the end of March to 414,600 shares at the end of June.

Booking Holdings was included in a 2023 United Nations list of 17 parent companies involved in business activity in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, one of just seven not based in Israel.

Harvard also added 1.1 million shares in Netflix, valued at nearly $79 million, joining several high-profile investors betting on the streaming giant after a sharp decline in its stock price. Bill Ackman’s hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, opened a 3.15 million-share position in the company, making up nearly 5 percent of the fund’s portfolio.

Ackman, whose fund lost more than $400 million when it abruptly exited the investment in 2022, said he now believes the company has “effectively won the streaming wars.” Pershing bought the stock after a prolonged decline that Ackman said left it trading at a substantial discount.

Harvard also substantially reduced its holdings in SPDR Gold Trust, cutting its shares by roughly 87 percent. But the move did not represent an equivalent retreat from gold: HMC opened a new $149.5 million position in the iShares Gold Trust during the quarter.

Combined, the two gold funds were worth roughly $171 million at the end of June, compared with about $200 million held through SPDR Gold Trust alone at the end of March.

HMC also exited several holdings entirely, including a roughly $154 million stake in Union Pacific and its positions in Zillow and Flutter Entertainment. It opened new positions in geothermal energy company Fervo Energy worth nearly $37 million and optical technology company Lumentum worth about $23 million.

—Staff writer Megan L. Blonigen can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at mblon.50. Follow her on X at @MeganBlonigen.