Episode summary
Family Offices Amass $3.8 Billion SpaceX Bet in Boost for Musk | Bloomberg Intelligence
Bloomberg Intelligence
· · 25 min · Hosts: Paul Sweeney, Stacey Vanek Smith · Guests: Yiqin Shen, Ed Ludlow, Sam Fazeli, Sridhar Natarajan
Summary
Family offices and other wealthy pools of capital are showing up more aggressively in private-market bets, with the host and a guest saying more than a dozen family offices held at least $3.8 billion in SpaceX through the first half of 2026. The discussion also pointed to Harvard’s endowment and the University of California’s investment arm as examples of how elite institutional money reaches SpaceX through venture firms, even though the exact timing of those purchases is unclear from 13F filings.
The episode then turned to the AI funding boom, where a guest said Alphabet is looking to raise about A$5 billion in its debut bond offering in Australia to help finance surging data-center and capital-expenditure needs. The guest argued that AI infrastructure is so expensive that even cash-rich tech companies are now leaning on both equity and debt markets, while Anthropic’s reported preliminary second-quarter revenue of $11.5 billion reinforced investor enthusiasm for the AI trade.
On biotech, a guest said AstraZeneca stopped a clinical trial of volrustomig after it failed to look better than existing lung-cancer therapies, even as two other late-stage readouts helped support the stock. The episode closed with a separate finance-and-sports story about Mark Walter, whose insurance-related asset issues are pushing him to sell the Los Angeles Lakers and consider other asset sales to reduce affiliated investments.
Key takeaways
- The host and a guest said more than a dozen family offices held at least $3.8 billion in SpaceX through the first half of 2026.
- The guest said Alphabet is seeking about A$5 billion in Australia as AI capex drives companies to borrow more aggressively.
- The guest said Alphabet’s capex for 2026 is approaching $200 billion and is expected to rise further in 2027 and 2028.
- The guest said Anthropic’s preliminary second-quarter revenue was $11.5 billion, helping validate the AI trade.
- A guest said AstraZeneca’s volrustomig trial was stopped after it did not appear better than existing therapies for lung cancer.
- A guest said Mark Walter is exploring asset sales, including the Lakers, to help bring down affiliated investments at his insurers.
Notable quotes
“more than a dozen family offices at least hold more than uh 3.8 billion investment through the first half of the year”
“there are lots of college endowment funds also invested in SpaceX including Harvard uh management which is that endowment”
“Alphabet is looking to raise 5 billion uh in a debt offering, a debut bond offering. Where? Australia”
“AI is so expensive, requires so much capital that these companies are going to the equity markets and the fixed income markets”
How the episode opens
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Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube. It is 13F season and that's always a kind of a fun time in the marketplace because you get to see what some of your favorite investors what they're buying uh what they're selling here and that's certainly the case uh this time. Echin Shen joins us here.
She's equities reporter for Bloomberg News who joins us live here in our Bloomberg interactive broker studio. Echin um talk to us about some of these ultrawealthy individuals these family offices. What are they buying?
Sure. Yeah. So I would say for this 13th quarter lots of attention is going to SpaceX because we know SpaceX had this record setting IPO right in June and it's for the first time like the public got to see who are the sort of the earlier investor private investor um on its back and it turn from certain filings u more than a dozen family offices at least hold more than uh 3.8 billion investment through the first half of the year.
So that includes a family office from Haya Hotels, Nick Priser who hold 1.8 billion investment and Michael Plat uh Blue Crush Capital and also this like super influential finance dynasty backed by Brazil's Mara Sales. um each of them hold over 100 million of stake and also remember some of these investors are also investors in Tesla and other uh Elon Musk listed business empire. So there are a lot of really exciting fastmoving stocks right now a lot of excitement around AI and things like that.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- space investment by family offices
- ai debt issuance
- anthropic revenue growth
- biotech clinical trial halt
- doj probes guggenheim
Companies and tickers mentioned
- GOOGL
- GOOG
- AZN
- SpaceX
- Alphabet Inc.
- Anthropic PBC
- AstraZeneca Plc
- Guggenheim Partners
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Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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