For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL – January 29, 2026 – Today, Zacks Investment Ideas feature highlights Tesla TSLA, The Baron First Principles ETF RONB, Baron Partners Fund BPTRX, Baron Focused Growth Fund BFGFX and The Entrepreneur Private-Public Crossover ETF XOVR.
Want SpaceX Before the IPO? These Funds Are All-In
SpaceX, the hottest and most highly valued private company, is expected to go public this year in what could be the largest IPO in history. According to the Financial Times, the company is planning to raise as much as $50 billion, targeting a valuation of about $1.5 trillion.
Why Everyone Wants a Slice of SpaceX
Elon Musk founded SpaceX in May 2002, before becoming involved with Tesla. The company now has a de facto monopoly on rocket launches, and its satellite internet division, Starlink, is reportedly a cash cow. According to Musk, SpaceX has been cash-flow positive for many years.
Like many other high-profile startups, SpaceX chose to remain private as institutional investors continued to pour money into the firm. Now, Musk’s ambition to build data centers in space is helping drive the company’s IPO plans.
SpaceX is not the only company pursuing solar-powered orbital data centers. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is also in the race, and Google is working on a space data center project called Project Suncatcher.
Building data centers in space will require hundreds of billions of dollars. Companies will need to keep chips cool, protect them from radiation, and transmit data back to Earth with minimal latency.
Because this combines two of the hottest themes, AI and space, there is significant investor interest in SpaceX.
Since SpaceX shares do not trade on a stock exchange, investing is not easy unless you are a large private equity investor, a venture capitalist, or an employee. Because retail investors cannot purchase shares directly, they are exploring other options and piling into funds that hold SpaceX.
Baron ETFs and Mutual Funds
Billionaire investor Ron Baron has been a strong supporter of Elon Musk for a long time. Ron has consistently purchased SpaceX shares annually since 2017 on behalf of his mutual funds and other accounts, according to his letter dated July 16, 2024.
The Baron First Principles ETF currently has about 16% exposure to SpaceX. The fund, which made its debut last month, has quickly seen its assets grow to $124 million.
Baron Partners Fund has 29% of its total assets in SpaceX, while Baron Focused Growth Fund holds 19% of its net assets in the company as of December 31, 2025. These funds have significantly outperformed their respective benchmarks since inception.
The SEC places a 15% limit on open-ended funds holding illiquid investments. It defines an investment as illiquid if it cannot be sold within seven days without significantly impacting its market value. Baron funds no longer treat SpaceX as an illiquid security due to its active secondary market, as highlighted by Bloomberg.
The Entrepreneur Private-Public Crossover ETF
XOVR is the first ETF to hold a private company. The fund changed its ticker and strategy in August 2024 but remains focused on entrepreneurial companies.
The fund added SpaceX through a special-purpose vehicle (SPV) last year and has seen its assets grow significantly since then. As the WSJ pointed out, such SPVs may charge fees as high as 25% of any gains, and it is unclear how these fees will impact the value of its SpaceX position.
Additionally, there is little clarity on how the ETF will determine a fair value for its SpaceX position, as required by the SEC.
The fund’s assets have ballooned to over $1.6 billion as investors piled in to get exposure to SpaceX. NVIDIA and Meta Platforms are the other top holdings in the fund. The ETF has significantly underperformed the S&P 500 over the past year.
To learn more, please watch the short video above.
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Tesla, Inc. (TSLA): Free Stock Analysis ReportThis article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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