Key Takeaways
- SpaceX could become one of the world’s largest listed companies if it floats.
- Scottish Mortgage investment trust bought into the private company in 2018, turning a significant profit.
- Four Baillie Gifford trusts have significant stakes in SpaceX, with three of these having it as the portfolio’s top holding.
SpaceX is expected to go public this year, becoming one of the world’s largest companies. While stock investors will have to wait for the hotly anticipated IPO of the space exploration firm, holders of UK investment trusts may already have significant exposure.
The UK’s largest investment trust, Scottish Mortgage SMT, has already made a significant paper profit on a 2018 bet on SpaceX, turning a USD 200 million stake into USD 3.3 billion. This stake represents 15% of the trust’s portfolio and makes SpaceX the top holding.
“The flexibility to invest in both public and late-stage private companies gives the managers an edge in accessing high-growth opportunities, which is backed by the trust’s size,” says Daniel Haydon, fund analyst at Morningstar.
How to Invest in SpaceX Before Its UK IPO
Can UK investors buy SpaceX shares? Not directly, as SpaceX remains privately owned, but UK investors can get exposure through investment trusts such as Scottish Mortgage, which has a 15% exposure.
When is the SpaceX IPO expected? There’s no confirmed date for a listing, although market speculation points to a potential IPO in 2026.
Are investment trusts allowed to hold private companies? Yes, unlike open-ended funds, UK investment trusts can invest in private companies and have greater flexibility over how much they allocate to them.
Scottish Mortgage is one of four investment trusts managed by UK asset manager Baillie Gifford with significant SpaceX exposure.
Three of these 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. The only other UK investment with exposure is £3 billion trust RIT Capital Partners RCP, which bought SpaceX in December 2024. But the total portfolio weighting in this trust to SpaceX is less than 2%.
Apart from Baillie Gifford, asset managers like BlackRock and Fidelity also have exposure to SpaceX, according to Pitchbook data, but these holdings are not in retail-focused funds, ETFs or trusts.
Investment Trusts Offer Early Access to SpaceX
Morningstar’s Haydon says that the SpaceX story illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of investment trusts’ exposure to unlisted companies.
Unlike open-end funds, UK investment trusts have no regulatory cap on the portfolio weighting towards private companies, and this can vary between 30% and 60%, according to trade body AIC. Private asset holdings are usually less liquid and harder to value than listed stocks, a topic investigated in a recent article on private equity trusts.
With investor interest in private assets growing, trusts can offer early and profitable exposure to explosive growth stories. Haydon says this private company exposure is a strong incentive for investors in vehicles like Scottish Mortgage.
But the “rapid appreciation of single holding” has created a “concentration level that exceeds typical portfolio construction guidelines”, Haydon says.
The trust has its own self-imposed limit of 30% in private companies, and SpaceX is now more than half that allocation.
Because private companies offer limited “windows” for owners to offload holdings, trusts also find it harder to adjust exposure to these kinds of companies compared with listed and liquid stocks, which can be bought and sold easily.
As a listed company with tradeable shares, an investment trust is also restricted in how it reallocates capital in its portfolio.
“As a closed-end trust, Scottish Mortgage has limited tools to reduce the position. Selling in SpaceX’s semiannual tender offers would require capacity and timing, while deploying capital elsewhere would necessitate selling other holdings. Issuing new shares would dilute existing investors’ SpaceX exposure,” Haydon adds.
How Big Could the SpaceX IPO Be?
Space Exploration Technologies Corp, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, is the first private company to send astronauts to the International Space Station. SpaceX designs and manufactures launch rockets but also owns Starlink, a satellite mobile internet service that has been used in conflict zones like Ukraine.
In December 2025, the space exploration firm was drastically revalued higher, from USD 400 billion to USD 800 billion, making significant profits for early backers. If it floated at current levels, SpaceX would become the 10th largest stock in the MSCI World index, roughly in line with the size of US bank JPMorgan Chase JPM. SpaceX founders are expected to push for a higher valuation at IPO of USD 1 trillion or more, according to Bloomberg. This would bring SpaceX closer to Tesla’s TSLA market value of USD 1.3 trillion, which has multiplied after 15 years as a public company.
How Scottish Mortgage Turned $200 Million Into $3.3 Billion With SpaceX
Scottish Mortgage, which has a Morningstar Medalist Rating of Silver, first invested in SpaceX in 2018 and added to its holdings again in 2021. Its USD 200 million investment has now grown to a value of USD 3.3 billion and accounts for over 15% of the portfolio, up from 8% in late November 2025. The next holding by size is chipmaker TSMC 2330, with a 5.1% weighting.
The last time the Scottish Mortgage portfolio was this concentrated was in 2020, when Tesla’s soaring valuation drove the holding up to a similar level, but Tesla was a public company at this point.
Lead manager Tom Slater says the trust’s portfolio is more concentrated than usual but is “very comfortable with the big markup in the price” of SpaceX. He also won’t commit to whether the team will change the weighting of the stock in the portfolio.
“We’re not going to be in a rush to make that decision just on the basis of updating the book value that we hold it at,” he says.
Still, Slater says that the trust he manages is diversified, despite the high SpaceX exposure. “Scottish Mortgage isn’t about one company or one theme. We want to have a broad diversity of themes and companies and portfolios, so we are mindful of that as well,” he adds.
While the trust’s managers say the talk of a 2026 float for SpaceX is premature, they are enthusiastic about the prospects for the firm.
Deputy manager Lawrence Burns sees SpaceX as a “platform business” that goes beyond sending rockets into space. He says the company could build add-on services such as satellite connectivity, data centers in space and “microgravity manufacturing”, where complex materials such as semiconductors are made in a weightless environment.
“We certainly can see how this is a much more valuable business in the future than it is today. You only have to go to your favorite sci-fi novel for that. Which good sci-fi novel doesn’t have a sort of evil corporation controlling access to the stars, and incredible wealth as a result of it? So yes, there are lots of encouraging things,” Tom Slater says.
Which Other Baillie Gifford Trusts Own SpaceX?
SpaceX also has a significant weight in smaller investment trusts managed by Baillie Gifford but these three trusts all reduced their exposure to SpaceX at the last “liquidity window” in November, when backers can buy or sell stakes, while Scottish Mortgage maintained its position.
Edinburgh Worldwide’s managers chose to reduce its holding in October 2025 as SpaceX was revalued from around USD 350 billion in December 2024 to USD 400 billion in the summer of 2025. The uplift meant the trust held more than its threshold of 25% in unlisted companies. Jonathan Simpson-Dent, chair of Edinburgh Worldwide, said this exposure introduces concentration risk and limits the company from making new investments into unlisted companies.
