Google just revealed it holds about $94 billion of SpaceX stock. The win came from one bet it made back in 2015.
That sounds like a giant new investment, but it is not. Google made this bet more than ten years ago, long before SpaceX got big.
How Google’s SpaceX Bet Started in 2015
In January 2015, Google and Fidelity put $1 billion into SpaceX. Together they got just under 10% of the company. That valued SpaceX at more than $10 billion. Google led the round.
Then SpaceX grew for a decade. It went public in June at about $135 a share. That valued it near $1.77 trillion, the biggest IPO ever. Google’s early bet had grown into a stake worth about 100 times more.
New funding rounds slowly shrank Google’s slice. Today it owns close to 5% of SpaceX.
Why the Windfall Barely Moved the Stock
The gain showed up in Google’s June quarter. Its investments rose about $99 billion on paper. That pushed profit up to $112 billion. Stakes in AI firm Anthropic helped too.
But almost none of it was real cash. Of the $9.11 Google earned per share, $6.26 came from the paper gain. Without it, profit looked ordinary. The gain even brought a $21.9 billion tax bill.
Wall Street shrugged. In its second-quarter earnings report, Google gave the huge gain just one line. It did not even name the companies. The stock still closed down about 1.2%.
Google has done this before. In early 2025, it booked an $8 billion paper gain the same quiet way.
Investors cared more about spending. Google spent $44.9 billion in three months on AI. It even burned through $5.9 billion more cash than it made. That record AI spending worried the market. Analysts had flagged the risk before the report.
Most of the SpaceX Stake Is Locked Up
Here is the catch. Google cannot just sell the shares and spend the money. Its filing shows $80 billion of them are locked for now. The rest is locked for even longer.
The value can also drop fast. SpaceX shares jumped above $200 after the IPO. Then they fell to around $114 by July 23. The first shares unlock in August, when SpaceX reports earnings.
So the $94 billion is a great result, not a payday. It is paper profit, and most of it is stuck for now. The real test comes when the lockups end and Google can finally sell.