ARK Invest purchased nearly 3.3 million shares of SpaceX (SPCX) as Elon Musk’s company went public Friday in the largest IPO ever, creating a stake worth more than $500 million by the end of the day.
The shares, priced at $135 for sale, closed at $160.95, up more than 19.2% on their first day.
The Cathie Wood-owned company liquidated nearly $280 million in shares in the week leading up to the listing, then on Friday sold about 948,000 more shares of 13 companies worth at least $48 million, including Advanced Micro Devices, Roku and Baidu, according to daily emailed filings during the period.
The ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) did the bulk of the buying, ending the day with SpaceX at 3.28% of its portfolio.
A nearly 20% first-day surge in the largest IPO in history indicates that institutions are once again paying for the risk of high-beta innovation. Although Bitcoin is the highest beta asset of the group, the hottest exchange on the market now is a flurry of listings in the AI and space space, with OpenAI and Anthropic also filing for IPOs.
