SpaceX’s valuation hit in December following a closely watched secondary share sale. In that transaction, the company and investors agreed to buy $1.25 billion in stock from insiders at $185 a share.

These days, a share of Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX on private share marketplace is valued higher, at around $229. ​​1 That kind of rise in months following a large tender offer isn’t unusual, as such offerings commonly set a price floor for subsequent, smaller share trades, said , head of data and investment solutions at Forge.

SpaceX vs Tesla

The contrast between public and private market trendlines for Musk- and spacetech-related assets is dramatic.

In the roughly three months since SpaceX’s tender, shares of Musk-led soared to an all-time high around $489 per share before nosediving to around $220 on Monday.

Falling sales in China and multiple European markets contributed to the selloff. We’re also seeing backlash from much of Tesla’s former and prospective U.S. customer base regarding its CEO’s political activities.

After Monday’s selloff, Tesla shares rose some in Tuesday trading, after President on shortly after midnight that he would buy a new Tesla as “a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American.” (Stocks were up for many beaten-down names from the prior day’s selloff, so it’s unclear whether this was a contributing factor.)

Spacetech fell on public markets too

Publicly traded spacetech companies have also been up and down.

Shares of , a provider of launch services and satellite design, hit an all-time high in January and have since shed around 40% of their value. Another prominent spacetech company, , saw its stock tumble this week after its lunar lander ended up on its side in a crater.

Of course, the most visible spacetech disaster of late involved SpaceX. The company suffered a major setback to its interplanetary ambitions when its giant Starship rocket in space last week minutes after liftoff in Texas, raining debris and bringing a temporary halt to air traffic in parts of Florida.

Starship has launched twice this year, and blew up on both occasions.

If SpaceX were a publicly traded company, one would expect share prices to decline following such a setback. Private markets, however, don’t exhibit the same kind of rapid valuation shifts in response to breaking news. In a bad week for major indices, this appears to be one of the advantages of staying private.

That said, private company valuations do eventually decline if performance falters or pessimism around their future prospects grows. During the “great reset” after the market peak in late 2021, the median company on Forge’s platform saw a 24% valuation drop from its last primary funding round.

SpaceX, however, has been moving higher pretty consistently. The $350 billion valuation mark it hit in December represented a 67% surge from the previous high of , which the company reportedly achieved in a June secondary share sale.

Of late, SpaceX has been known for generally holding buyback events twice a year, in which it purchases shares from employees. If it does so again this summer, we can expect an updated valuation that reflects investors’ latest presumptions about its future potential.

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To answer that question, Crunchbase took a look at founders and CEOs across several groupings of startup unicorns. The research included the most heavily funded private companies, newly minted unicorns and companies that recently crossed the $5 billion valuation mark.

The short answer? Yes, immigrants are still heavily represented in the ranks of U.S. unicorn founders and CEOs. They hail from multiple continents, and are leading companies in sectors from e-commerce to crypto to pharmaceuticals.

The long answer? Yes, but maybe less so. Early data indicates the proportion of high-valuation U.S. startups founded or led by immigrants may be trending down some. One factor is the growth of startup hubs outside the U.S., making it easier for founders to launch companies in their home country. The other, most notorious factor: the hurdles of securing a visa as a would-be startup founder.

“There is no visa specifically for someone who wants to start a company,” according to , founding partner at , a Silicon Valley-based firm that invests in U.S. startups with immigrant founders.

While U.S. student enrollment of foreign nationals roughly doubled from 2007 to 2018, there hasn’t been a corresponding strategy to speed or simplify graduates’ pursuit of a green card, Mehta said. And although that issue predates Trump’s election, the current administration hasn’t helped, deciding not to implement an Obama-era .

Still, a striking percentage of funded private companies that crossed the $1 billion valuation threshold this past year are immigrant founded. Below, we take a look at 19 such companies, along with a look founders’ countries of origin.

We also look at the most heavily funded, highest-valuation private companies overall with immigrant founders and CEOs.

The big picture

If investors are backing fewer immigrant-led U.S. startups, it may be because there are fewer available to back. For the 2018-19 period, U.S. immigration declined to 595,000 people—the lowest level since the 1980s, according to one oft-cited . It’s a level that leaves even some members of the Trump administration’s inner circle concerned that immigration levels are to support economic growth.

Of course, one needn’t be a new immigrant to launch a high-flying startup. Many of the successful founders on our lists above immigrated years or decades before their companies took flight. The lists, overall, include immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children as well as those who came later, commonly to attend universities.

Lastly, we should keep in mind that immigration, like unicorns, venture funding and startup valuations, has historically been rather cyclical. The issues confronting immigrant founders today may very well fade away or morph into something completely different in coming years.

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The latest example of high velocity funding is satellite Internet startup OneWeb, which recently announced a galactic-sized $1.25 billion venture funding round in the wake of a successful launch. The financing, which included a long investor list featuring the ever spendy SoftBank, brought total funding for the Arlington, Virginia company to a whopping $3.4 billion.

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But is far from the only space tech company to secure a big round recently. A Crunchbase News roundup of large investments in the sector unearthed a sizable list of companies attracting attention and big checks from venture capitalists, with at least a half dozen securing rounds of $50 million or more since 2018.

What’s the draw? Largely, it’s the oft-repeated tale of a startup sector seeing valuations rise as early stage companies mature, said Chad Anderson, CEO of investor group .

“The barriers to entry came down in 2009, when SpaceX provided increased access to space through low-cost launch and transparent pricing,” Anderson said. “We saw the first pioneering companies, like [former Planet Labs]*, take advantage of that new access starting in 2013.”

Now, the crop of space tech companies that launched five or six years ago is middle-aged by startup standards and ripe for larger, later-stage rounds.

Economics of satellite design and launch have also become a lot more compelling for investors in recent years. Whereas satellites previously cost hundreds of millions (or even billions) to design, manufacture, and launch, today a small satellite can be built for tens of thousands of dollars and launched for a few hundred thousand dollars, Anderson said.

Venture capitalists seem to like that math. Over the past ten calendar years, Space Angels estimates that venture capital funds have invested nearly $4.2 billion into space companies. Of that total, 70 percent was deployed in the last three calendar years.

More firms are getting into the space as well. Currently, Anderson calculates that just over 40 percent of the Top 100 venture capital firms now have at least one space investment. Their investments are concentrated in two areas: satellites and launch technology, particularly for the small satellite space.

To get an idea of where the money is going, we put together a chart below showing the space tech companies that have secured some of the largest funding rounds since last year:

`

Company	Location	Business	Total Funding
	Arlington, VA, U.S.A.	Low-earth-orbiting global satellite network delivering internet access
	Huntington Beach, CA, U.S.A.	Low-cost launch technology for small satellites
	Seattle, WA, U.S.A.	Satellite launch and mission management services and satellite imagery
	McLean, VA, U.S.A.	Satellite technology for air traffic management
	Beijing, China	Developing a commercial space shuttle
	Tuscon, AZ, U.S.A.	Micro satellite launch services
	New York City, NY, U.S.A.	High resolution hyperspectral imaging satellites
	Espoo, Finland	Satellite imagery
	Tuscon, AZ, U.S.A.	Remotely operated, navigable space vehicles

`

While space tech is generating a lot of venture investment, however, not a lot of startups have yet made it to exit. That’s not entirely surprising, if we presume that typical venture startup-to-exit timelines apply. If the current crop of funded startups launched in the 2013 time frame, we’d expect to see exits pick up in a few years.

It is worth noting, however, that the one most famous and pioneering of the current crop of venture-backed space companies, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has also stayed private. Certainly SpaceX has the name recognition and track record to support a blockbuster IPO.

Yet Anderson contends that’s unlikely to happen – at least not for a very long time. For one, Musk has laid out the company’s ultimate goal as colonizing Mars. That doesn’t jive well with the typical public company duties like meeting quarterly numbers. It doesn’t help that Musk has already gotten into hot water with regulators for his approach at Tesla.

Yet as SpaceX pursues its grand ambitions, the company has also served as a launchpad for a number of other space tech entrepreneurs. We put together a list of with a SpaceX alum as founder or core team member.

So while colonizing Mars remains a risky bet, the odds in favor of blockbuster space tech exits on Earth are getting a lot higher.

*Planet and SpaceX are Space Angels portfolio companies.

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Just weeks after its first successful satellite launch, the company announced today that it has landed $1.25 billion in venture capital. The round was led by , , and the Government of Rwanda. Previous investors include Richard Branson’s and.

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This new round brings OneWeb’s total funding to $3.4 billion,. OneWeb has created operation centers in Virginia and London and has ground stations in Italy, Norway and Canada. It also has offices in Virginia, London, Florida, and California.

The capital infusion will help the company begin its “largest satellite launch campaign in history.”

For perspective on how this works – imagine a constellation of hundreds of satellites, the size of washing machines, in orbit to promote coverage.

Around October, OneWeb will start launching 30 satellites to space a month, with the goal of creating a constellation of 650 satellites. , that number could increase to 2,000 satellites.

These leaps are all part of the startup’s overall goal to bridge the digital divide.

Ricardo Salinas, founder and chairman of Grupo Salinas, said he’s spent over 20 years trying to bring connectivity to people in Mexico and Latin America. Further, he has “seen firsthand the power of connectivity to change and improve lives,” and believes OneWeb will tap into hard-to-reach places, .

Meanwhile, of fame has taken to Twitter to give customers a peek at the company’s recent feats. Yesterday, the Tesla CEO a video showing off the most recent SpaceX starship technology: heatshield hex tiles.

What does this mean? Only that the race for space continues to be onwards and upwards and by onwards and upwards we mean expensive and tech-heavy (naturally). The recent OneWeb round is just another step on the voyage.

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