Female “stock goddess” IPO day one slams $500 million to sweep up SpaceX! Even ARK Invest sells shares to raise money—and still buys.

Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest bought nearly 3.3 million shares of SpaceX—worth more than $500 million—on the first day of SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO. To raise this capital, ARK sold at least 13 stock holdings before and after the listing, cashing out more than $325 million. The move highlights institutional capital shifting from crypto assets to high-growth space and AI themes.
(Background: Is investing at $135 per share in the SpaceX IPO worth it? IPO date, share price, and how to buy SPACEX(PRE) and SPCX)
(Additional context: SpaceX oversubscribed by 4x, reaching $250 billion! Analysts: Tech and crypto can “bear” the steep “IPO tax” from sharp declines)

Table of Contents

Toggle

• How ARK raises over $10 billion
• 20% surge on the first day: the market’s appetite for innovation risk returns
• Cathie Wood’s Bitcoin faith vs. real-world capital allocation
• ARK’s valuation of SpaceX: the $2.5 trillion ambition

On the first day of SpaceX’s IPO—its largest-ever IPO by scale—Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest made a bold move, spending more than $500 million to buy nearly 3.3 million shares of SpaceX (SPCX). The transaction not only shows ARK’s unwavering confidence in SpaceX, but also reveals how institutional investors reallocate capital between crypto assets and high-growth innovation targets.

How ARK raises over $10 billion

Based on ARK’s daily transaction reports sent to investors, the company had already sold holdings worth about $280 million in the week before SpaceX’s listing. By the day of the listing (last Friday), it further dumped about 948k shares across at least 13 companies, with a total value of no less than $48 million. The assets that were liquidated or reduced included tech stocks such as AMD, Roku, and Baidu.

Among them, ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) was the biggest buyer. By the market close that day, SpaceX’s weighting in the fund had reached 3.28%. If calculated based on ARKK’s assets under management of about $15 billion, the corresponding amount invested in SpaceX is about $500 million, broadly matching the publicly disclosed figures.

20% surge on the first day: the market’s appetite for innovation risk returns

After SpaceX listed on Nasdaq at $135 per share, it surged nearly 20% in the first day, becoming one of Wall Street’s most watched IPO deals this year. Analysts pointed out that this wave of IPOs—focused on AI and space—has also drawn in a large amount of institutional capital that had previously stayed on the sidelines in digital assets such as Bitcoin, as OpenAI and Anthropic recently filed for listings as well.

CoinDesk was blunt in its report: “When even Bitcoin bull Wood chooses to pull capital from its crypto positions to buy SpaceX, it suggests that the risk of capital outflows from the crypto market in the short term may not stop anytime soon.”

Cathie Wood’s Bitcoin faith vs. real-world capital allocation

Cathie Wood is also one of the most aggressive institutional Bitcoin bulls. Her firm ARK itself has issued a spot Bitcoin ETF and has repeatedly publicly stated its astonishing target that Bitcoin could reach seven figures by 2030. However, when a specific high-beta innovation opportunity like the SpaceX IPO appears, ARK still schedules capital allocations without hesitation from a variety of assets—including crypto-related stocks.

This raises a proposition worth questioning: in Taiwan’s reading and investment context, do retail investors face similar choices? In recent years, demand in Taiwan’s capital markets for ETFs tied to themes such as space satellites and AI chips has continued to rise. Meanwhile, in an environment where cryptocurrency regulation is still not fully clear, cryptocurrencies remain a high-risk alternative allocation. ARK’s actions effectively send a signal: as institutions start shifting their “risk budgets” from crypto assets to the IPO market, retail investors may also need to reexamine how they balance their portfolios.

ARK’s valuation of SpaceX: the $2.5 trillion ambition

According to ARK’s internal valuation model, the company projects that SpaceX’s enterprise value will reach $2.5 trillion in 2030 (base case), while the optimistic scenario is even higher at $3.1 trillion. This figure is far above SpaceX’s valuation of $350 billion in the last round of private funding in 2024, and it also implies that ARK believes SpaceX still has more than 7x growth potential over the next five years.

By comparison, Bitcoin’s current market cap is about $2 trillion. Cathie Wood’s target price for Bitcoin in 2030 implies a market cap of roughly $30 trillion as well—also extremely optimistic. Comparing the two, ARK is essentially betting on the long-term value of “disruptive innovation” in both the space and crypto tracks, but in the short term, capital must make trade-offs between them.