Key Takeaways
- Three Baillie Gifford-managed investment trusts have SpaceX as the top holding.
- Scottish Mortgage first bought SpaceX in 2018.
- UK investment trust rules are allowed to hold as much as 60% in unlisted companies.
The SpaceX IPO is already one of the most hyped public offerings in many years. While UK investment platforms are gearing up for a surge in demand for SpaceX shares from retail customers ahead of the float on June 12, investors may already have significant exposure via some of the largest listed investment trusts, including £16 billion Scottish Mortgage SMT.
Scottish Mortgage, which has a Morningstar Medalist Rating of Gold, is one of four investment trusts managed by UK asset manager Baillie Gifford with significant SpaceX weighting. The trust first bought into SpaceX in 2018 with an investment of USD 200 million into the then unlisted company. This stake is now worth USD 3.5 billion at SpaceX’s current value, according to trust trade body, the Association of Investment Companies (AIC).
This exposure was then increased in 2021 and SpaceX now accounts for 17.9% of the trust’s portfolio, from 15% in January 2026 and 8% at the end of 2025. These increases reflect changes in the private valuation of SpaceX rather than Scottish Mortgage investing more money.
Shares in Scottish Mortgage are 25% higher since the start of 2026 and 47% higher over one year, helped by rising valuations of key holdings. After SpaceX, the second biggest portfolio holding, with a weighting of 6.5%, is Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC 2330. The trust is known for identifying high-growth tech stocks at early stages such as Alibaba BABA, Tesla TSLA, and Nvidia NVDA.
“The managers focus on identifying high-growth companies and holding them for the very long term to benefit from underappreciated compounded growth,” says Morningstar fund analyst Daniel Haydon.
“These companies are typically new entrants or disruptors, radically changing the landscape and challenging incumbents’ business models, and are typically founder-led.”
Three Baillie Gifford trusts have SpaceX as the top holding—Scottish Mortgage, Edinburgh Worldwide EWI, and Baillie Gifford US Growth USA—while it’s the second largest holding in private-equity focused trust Schiehallion MNTN.
Away from Baillie Gifford-managed trusts, SpaceX makes up around 3% of the £3.17 billion investment trust RIT Capital Partners RPT, which belongs to the flexible allocation Morningstar category.
Due to UK investment trust rules, portfolios can hold as much as 60% in unlisted companies.
“Investment trusts give investors access to these dynamic companies while they are still privately owned and rapidly gaining scale before they list on a stock market. Some of the companies looking to list this year have grown by hundreds of billions of dollars already,” says Annabel Brodie-Smith, communications director of the AIC.
Sunniva Kolostyak contributed to this article
