SpaceX is powering a new ETF race: Chart of the Day

SpaceX (SPAX.PVT) is not yet public, but the race to own it is already rearranging the ETF market.

A new space ETF with SpaceX exposure has surged past older rivals in assets just two months after launching, turning a once-niche corner of the ETF market into a pre-IPO access trade for one of the biggest expected IPOs on Wall Street.

The Tema Space Innovators ETF gives investors exposure to SpaceX through a special-purpose vehicle (SPV), a private-market structure that can hold stock in companies before they list publicly. That makes the fund less of a simple space basket and more of a workaround for investors who want SpaceX exposure before the IPO.

Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst Eric Balchunas called it "wild scenes in the Space ETF category" on X, noting that multiple space ETFs had been on the market for years before the Tema Space Innovators ETF passed them in its first two months.

His read was blunt: the Tema Space Innovators ETF has SpaceX SPV exposure at about 10% of the fund, and "there's a feeding frenzy [right now] to get exposure."

That feeding frenzy is not limited to one ticker.

Balchunas also noted that ETFs with SpaceX exposure -- the Tema Space Innovators ETF, the Baron First Principles ETF (RONB), and the ERShares Private-Public Crossover ETF (XOVR) -- were all in the top 1% of inflows over the past week. The Baron First Principles ETF, he added, had tripled assets from $400 million to $1.2 billion in two weeks.

His punchline: "SpaceX is giving otherwise small/new ETFs superpowers."

Yahoo Finance flagged the ETF race earlier this month, when Wall Street was already building funds around SpaceX before the company had listed. Now, the workaround trade has moved from concept to leaderboard.

The same shadow-market logic is showing up around private AI names like Anthropic (ANTH.PVT). The company is private, but investors are finding public ways to watch it, price it, and trade around it.

That's why SpaceX's eventual IPO could be such a major market event. A hot listing would not just add another ticker to the board. It could also pull together private-market demand, ETF flows, and the broader AI-infrastructure trade already pushing market concentration higher.

For investors, the signal is simple. SpaceX is already acting like a public-market force before becoming a public company. The more cash piles into these ETFs, the more the space trade looks like a waiting room for one stock.