Want to buy SpaceX stock? You have to know someone

livemint.com:

SpaceX has become one of the investing world’s most exclusive clubs. Invites circulate via group chats, word of mouth and emails marked confidential. Investment vehicles providing access to Elon Musk’s closely held rocket and satellite company have generated hefty demand, and fees for those arranging them.

For years, the company’s value has only gone in one direction—up. Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX—which flirted with bankruptcy not long after Musk founded the company more than two decades ago—now dominates the launch business. And it has built its satellite-internet division, Starlink, into an industry and geopolitical force.

Current and former employees, venture capitalists and creators of SpaceX investing vehicles have all benefited from the intense investor appetite for the company. Gaining access to SpaceX shares can mean sizable costs. SpaceX also carefully tracks its investor base, and not everyone gets in.

As a private company, SpaceX isn’t required to report financial results. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that the company in 2022 doubled its revenue compared with the previous year’s total as Starlink gained customers, and global attention, for its role in Ukraine. Many investors are betting that growth will continue for years to come.

“You can argue about where it’s trading in terms of valuation, whether that’s the right place to buy. But there’s a whole lot of believers in this stock," said Glen Anderson, chief executive of Rainmaker Securities, which operates a marketplace where investors can trade investment interests in private companies such as SpaceX. Investor demand has been a factor in SpaceX’s steadily climbing valuation over the past decade, providing executives and other staff the