2026-08-14
21 分钟Back in 2020, a data engineer named Ram Ruperetti was feeling lucky.
He had gotten a chance to buy into one of the hottest tech companies in the world.
He was speaking to friends and one of them mentioned to him,
hey, I have some opportunities to buy into companies before they go public.
And top on his list was the opportunity maybe to buy shares of SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company.
Our colleague Corey Dribush spoke with Rupi Reddy about it.
My friends knew that, you know, I invested in SpaceX for a long time, right?
Wherever I go, they used to tease me, now you are a millionaire, you have this many stocks and all that stuff.
Because Rupi Reddy got in as a pre-IPO investor, it meant that whenever SpaceX went public,
he was set to potentially make a lot of money.
When he bought into the shares in late 2020 and early 2021, the valuation of SpaceX was around $58 billion.
So as that valuation grew, his plans grew as well.
One of his children is going to be a senior this fall in high school.
So in his head, this will pay for that college education.
The way Rupert Reddy was invested in SpaceX was pretty complicated.
It was through something called a special purpose vehicle or SPV.
He wasn't buying the actual shares of the company.
He was buying a share or an interest in a fund, and the fund supposedly held shares of the company.
So he was a little bit removed.
He was a little bit removed, and as we continue, we'll understand how far removed he ended up being.