Ark Invest bought more than $500 million worth of SpaceX shares on IPO day

ARK Invest bought nearly 3.3 million shares of SpaceX (SPCX) as Elon Musk’s company went public in the largest IPO ever on Friday, building a stake worth more than $500 million by the end of the day.

The shares, priced at $135 for the sale, closed at $160.95, rising more than 19.2% on their first day.

The Cathie Wood-owned firm liquidated almost $280 million of stock in the week before the listing, then sold another roughly 948,000 shares across 13 companies worth at least $48 million on Friday, including Advanced Micro Devices, Roku and Baidu, according to daily emailed statements over the period.

The ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) did the bulk of the buying, ending the day with SpaceX at 3.28% of its portfolio.

A first-day pop of almost 20% on the largest IPO in history signals institutions are paying up for high-beta innovation risk again. While bitcoin is the highest-beta asset in the group, the hottest trade in the market is now a wave of AI and space listings, with OpenAI and Anthropic also filing to go public.

There is a finite amount of risk capital, and when even a bitcoin bull like Wood is rotating toward it rather than adding to crypto, it’s a sign that funds are likely to continue being sucked out of the crypto markets in the near term.

An ARK model targets a $2.5 trillion enterprise value for SpaceX in 2030, with a bull case near $3.1 trillion, built off the company’s $350 billion private valuation in 2024.

ARK also runs a spot bitcoin ETF, and Wood has been among the most vocal institutional bitcoin bulls, with long-term price targets running into seven figures.