Author: Shenchao TechFlow
On May 20, the SEC website posted SpaceX’s S-1 filing. The next day, a fund with the ticker “NASA” attracted $375 million in a single day, tripling its AUM within a week—despite having been launched just seven weeks earlier.
Seven weeks later, it had become the world’s largest space-themed ETF, far surpassing the longtime leader UFO. The amount it raised in seven weeks exceeded what UFO had raised in seven years combined.
Everyone rushing into NASA wants to buy SpaceX, but the amount of SpaceX they actually acquire is decreasing.
Where did the money go?
The NASA ETF's hallmark is "the only pure-space ETF globally holding SpaceX." As of May 21, NASA indirectly holds 232,000 shares of SpaceX common stock equivalents via an SPV, with a book value of $147.4 million, implying an implicit valuation of approximately $1.51 trillion.
The numbers look substantial. But there’s a detail that ordinary investors would never notice. According to ETF.com, a week ago, NASA’s stake in SpaceX accounted for 10.3%. A week later, it was diluted to 4.6%.
Because the subscription funds came in too quickly, the fund manager had no time to acquire SpaceX shares on the secondary market. The influx of new capital was forced to buy other publicly traded space stocks, diluting the intended exposure to SpaceX for investors.
Retail investors rushed in wanting to buy SpaceX, but ended up buying Rocket Lab, AST SpaceMobile, and a bunch of other assets instead.
More subtly, the valuation mechanism: the SPV’s holdings are only updated when Tema conducts its own trades. In other words, regardless of how secondary market prices for SpaceX fluctuate, the book value of NASA’s stake remains unchanged.
This setup doesn’t matter much in a bull market. But if the stock breaks down after listing, that portion held by the SPV will react in an almost bizarrely delayed manner. Worse still, this SPV is locked up for six months after SpaceX’s official IPO. If the opening price crashes, retail investors can flee—but the SPV cannot.
The ETF charges an annual management fee of 0.87%, but 65% of its apparent gains come from assets like Rocket Lab and Intuitive Machines, which have already surged dramatically. SpaceX, by contrast, contributed very little.
NASA is essentially a thematic fund using SpaceX as bait, filled with a collection of small-cap space stocks. The bait’s flavor matters, but what’s served on the plate is a different fish.
Valuation inversion
Many people don’t realize that some of the key assets in this sector have already gone through one round of price increases.
Rocket Lab rose 357% over the past 12 months; Planet Labs rose 979%; LUNR rose 212%. ARKX increased 62% over the past year, and ROKT rose 75%. SpaceX merely ignited a dry tinder that was already smoldering.
When you break down these numbers, questions arise. Planet Labs rose 979% in a year, but its core business is selling satellite imagery data. Do its fundamentals justify a stock price nearly ten times higher?
In 2019, there were 102 orbital launches worldwide; in 2025, this number rose to 342, doubling the peak of the space race in 1967. According to Grand View Research, the global space industry was valued at $466 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow to $769 billion by 2030.
But the question is, the industry grew from $466 billion to $769 billion—why would that correspond to a 10x increase in the secondary market?
This is the classic script of a valuation inversion. Fundamentals are growing linearly, while the stock price is growing exponentially, with the gap made up by a “narrative premium.” And the sole source of this narrative premium is SpaceX’s impending IPO.
What exactly did the real buyers purchase?
Returning to the company SpaceX itself.
Revenue in 2024 was $18.67 billion, compared to $10.3 billion in 2023. However, the company incurred a loss of $4.59 billion in 2024, compared to a profit of $791 million in 2023, turning directly from profit to loss.
According to CNN, the company lost nearly $5 billion last year due to its AI department spending heavily to build data centers.
SpaceX's prospectus reveals that xAI has been merged into SpaceX, along with X (formerly Twitter). This so-called "space IPO" is essentially a comprehensive bundling of all of Musk's assets. The prospectus also discloses that Musk controls 85% of the voting rights; unless he votes to remove himself, no one can remove him.
A $1.75 trillion valuation for SpaceX corresponds to a narrative combining space, AI, satellite internet, and social media. The larger the narrative, the more inflated the price.
But the secondary market doesn’t care about that. The secondary market cares that everyone is rushing to get on board—so I need to get on too.
After all is said and done, the biggest winners aren’t the retail shareholders of SpaceX, as they haven’t yet invested; nor are they the investors who rushed into NASA-themed ETFs, as their exposure to SpaceX is being diluted.
The most profitable are the ETF issuers. NASA’s fee of 0.87% is the third highest among similar funds. With $1.3 billion in AUM, this translates to $11 million in annual management fee revenue.
The essence of launching an ETF is the same as launching a token: you need a story, a timing, and a plausible benchmark. SpaceX provided all three.
Before the IPO
On June 12, SpaceX is expected to list on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol SPCX. The underwriting syndicate, led by some of the world's largest investment banks, is targeting a fundraising range of $40 billion to $80 billion, far exceeding the record set by Saudi Aramco in 2020.
This will be the largest IPO in human history.
If the stock breaks below its offering price on the first day of trading, all ETF investors who bought in based on the SpaceX story will find that their SPV positions are still stuck at the "outdated price" from months ago, unable to immediately cut their losses or exit.
If the opening price surges, those who missed buying the ETF will rush in, further driving up the ETF’s premium and diluting SpaceX’s actual weight within the ETF, creating a comical reverse feedback loop: the more people buy, the less SpaceX each investor ends up acquiring.
After SpaceX, a host of industry giants are waiting in line to go public. Each new market-leading "concept stock" that lists will give rise to a new wave of ETFs, and each new wave of ETFs will repeat the same dilution game.
The industry doesn’t lack new stories—it lacks people who ask, “Did I really buy what I thought I bought?” The answer will come after June 12. But by then, those who rushed into NASA today won’t care about the answer—they’ll either be counting their money or fighting for their rights.