SpaceX effect: Indian millionaires and family offices hunt for the next big US frontier-tech payoff | Stock Market News

Summary

Wealthy Indians are increasingly looking to invest in US frontier-tech and AI companies following the successful SpaceX IPO. With significant potential returns, they are accessing these opportunities to diversify globally amid muted local market returns.

BENGALURU: Indian family offices and wealthy investors are widening their bets on private US frontier-tech and artificial intelligence (AI) companies after the SpaceX initial public offering (IPO) gave them a clearer sense of the scale of returns and the size of the market.

These investors bet privately on SpaceX through wealth managers and structured deals, using special purpose vehicles (SPVs) and funds. The paper returns on SpaceX-linked bets range from 20x to 100x, but these gains will remain unrealized until positions are unwound after the lock-in period ends.

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Viram Shah, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of Vested Finance, said some Indian investors who entered SpaceX through its platform are doing well on paper. He pointed to two funds done last year at $45 and $50 per share, which are now roughly 2-3x on paper, though the final outcome depends on where the stock trades once the lock-in expires.

Indian investors and ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNIs) are now looking to repeat the SpaceX play in a wider basket of unlisted US companies. The SpaceX IPO, priced at $75 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation, emerged as the biggest listing in history and reset expectations around what private-market winners can become.

"There is tremendous interest in the space of unlisted investments outside India, especially in the US," said Gautami Gavankar, president of Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. She said Indian investors are betting on AI, defence tech, semiconductors and autonomous technology.

"This is an evolved-investor trend, where wealthy Indian clients, including family offices and UHNIs, are increasingly willing to go offshore for differentiated opportunities," she said.

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Industry executives and people familiar with the deals said the next wave of Indian interest is shifting beyond the cluster of large language model (LLM) companies to names such as Stripe, Whoop, Revolut, Shield AI, Anduril, Epic Games and Kraken. Mint reported earlier that OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, xAI, and SpaceX were among the companies drawing interest from wealthy Indians.

Rising demand

Demand is not limited to a few marquee AI names and has risen sharply over several months, driven by fear of missing out on the global AI and technology rally, particularly in the US, said Yogesh Kalwani, head of investment at InCred Wealth.

"We are seeing interest across a broader basket of US frontier-tech companies spanning AI, defence tech, semiconductors, autonomy and other use-cases where AI is being applied, not just the large language model layer," Kalwani said. "I would argue that relatively muted returns from Indian markets over the past two years have also pushed wealthy clients to diversify globally."

Average ticket sizes for individual Indian investors have largely remained in the range of $150,000 to $200,000, within the limit allowed, according to industry executives. For family offices, the cheques can be much larger. Mint learnt that such investments can easily run into the $50 million to $100 million range.

Shah of Vested Finance said there is interest not only from family offices in India but also from Indians based overseas.

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"We are seeing participation from family offices in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi and also from Gujarat, in addition to Indians living abroad," he said.

These deals are attractive because it gives Indian investors a way to get in at an earlier stage of value creation. That appeal is especially strong in fitness tracking company Whoop, last valued at about $10 billion, fintech firm Revolut, which was valued at $75 billion in a late-2025 capital raise, defence-tech company Shield AI, valued at $12.7 billion in its latest funding round, and video game company Epic Games, valued at $28.7 billion to $31.5 billion in past rounds.

Stripe declined to comment on Indian investor interest. Revolut, Whoop, Shield AI, Anduril, Epic Games and Kraken did not respond to queries emailed by Mint until press time.

Pooled funds

Investors rely on wealth managers and private banks to access pooled offshore vehicles and secondary-market opportunities rather than invest directly in these companies. The pooling vehicle is usually set up offshore by a fund manager or specialist administrator, while banks and wealth advisers in India help investors get access to it.

These special purpose vehicles, or offshore funds, pool money from multiple investors and use the combined cheque to buy into a targeted company. The structure is typically long-duration and illiquid, with exits depending on future secondary sales, acquisitions or public listings, rather than on an investor's choice to sell at will.

Kalwani of InCred Wealth said an SPV is used when a large company needs a big, pooled cheque, while a fund is better suited to a portfolio of companies. He said most clients prefer funds because the risk is spread across multiple opportunities rather than to the outcome of one name.

"We have largely moved away from single-asset allocations over the last few quarters and now prefer diversified pools of companies. Our firm is focusing on funds with 10 to 15 opportunities rather than chasing a single moonshot such as SpaceX at trillion-dollar valuations. The idea is to manage client risk rather than simply chase the highest possible return," he added.

Exits, however, remain in the hands of the fund manager. Gavankar of Kotak said that in offshore fund and SPV structures, exit timing is typically determined by the fund manager, who must balance lock-in periods, liquidity considerations, market conditions and regulatory requirements before distributing proceeds to investors.

Even after an IPO, the money does not come back in one shot -- Kalwani said only a small portion of locked-up stock gets free after the first earnings report, with more shares becoming available for redemption over a 180-day period.

That means Indian investors won't get access to listed shares in the way a public-market investor would. In practice, the final outcome depends on whether the underlying position is sold at a premium or discount after the lock-in and on how the stock trades at that point.