Gina Rinehart's Hancock Prospecting bought a stake worth about 1 billion US dollars, roughly 1.4 billion Australian dollars, in SpaceX as part of the company's initial public offering on June 12.
The listing valued Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company at more than 2.1 trillion US dollars and was heavily oversubscribed, with Hancock chief executive Gary Korte describing the group's allocation as "a very pleasing result."
A rare bet outside mining
The purchase marked the largest investment Hancock Prospecting had made outside of iron ore. Rinehart called SpaceX "a rare business, led by a truly exceptional person," pointing to the company's reach across "space, connectivity and AI."
Hancock also framed the deal as strategic rather than purely financial, saying it saw scope for "mutually beneficial arrangements" with SpaceX around the critical minerals needed to build advanced technology infrastructure, an area closer to Hancock's traditional mining base.
A landmark listing for Musk
The SpaceX float was one of the largest public offerings in history and pushed Musk's personal fortune high enough to make him the world's first trillionaire. Rinehart's stake placed her among the marquee names in a shareholder register that institutional and sovereign investors had spent months trying to get access to ahead of the listing.
