It pays to have friends in high places—and if your best friend happens to be the richest man in the world, that’s even better. Antonio Gracias is Elon Musk’s best friend. The two met through the Silicon Valley web at the turn of the century, when Tesla was teetering on bankruptcy. Gracias loaned Musk $1 million to keep the company alive. Since that time, he has sat on the boards of Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity, Neuralink and The Boring Company.
Now he is poised to make as much as $140 billion from SpaceX’s IPO, according to Fortune. His firm, Valor Equity Partners, collectively holds more than 500 million shares of SpaceX Class A stock. At the $1.75 trillion valuation SpaceX is targeting, his stake could make him one of the 50 wealthiest people alive. His firm also signed three equipment lease agreements with SpaceX, obligating the company to pay Valor close to $20 billion over their terms.
Those Valor leases have alarmed corporate governance experts. Nell Minow, chair of ValueEdge Advisors, told Fortune they were “deeply troubling.” SpaceX’s auditor, PwC, refused to treat the deals as normal leases and instead called them “failed sale leasebacks,” forcing SpaceX to record $9 billion as related-party debt payable to the firm of one of SpaceX’s own directors.
