SpaceX is reportedly raising $500 million with help from Tesla's largest shareholder
- SpaceX is eyeing a $500 million funding round that values the company at more than $30 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports.
- Baillie Gifford, a century-old Scottish investment firm, owns about 7% of Tesla. An investment in SpaceX could be an affirmation of its confidence in CEO Elon Musk.
- The firm's head of US equities explained to Business Insider in October how it spots the next big tech companies to invest its money.
SpaceX is raising $500 million at a massive $30.5 billion valuation with assistance from the Scottish asset manager and Tesla's largest shareholder Baillie Gifford, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
The deal is expected to be announced by the end of the year, an anonymous source told the Paper.
A SpaceX spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
To date, Elon Musk's space venture has raised $2.2 billion across 17 rounds, according to Crunchbase.
The new investment, if completed, could reaffirm 110-year-old investment firm Baillie Gifford's confidence in Musk. The firm owns a roughly 7.5% stake in Tesla, worth slightly more than $13 million at Monday's closing prices, making it the largest individual shareholder in the company.
Baillie Gifford has made a name for itself with early bets on big-name tech stocks. The largest holdings in its portfolio currently include Amazon, Alibaba, Baidu, Facebook, Alphabet and more, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. A spokesperson for the firm declined to comment.
"Most companies really don't matter to long-run stock market outcomes," Tom Slater, head of Baillie Gifford's US equity investments and manager of its flagship fund, explained to Business Insider in October.
"There's just a small number that matter a huge amount. Our process is oriented around finding companies that could be those outliers. In order to do that, they've got to have a really big opportunity, they've got to have something unique about their ability to go after those opportunities, and it's got to be under appreciated by the market. Those are fairly rare things."
Read the full Wall Street Journal report here.