When SpaceX goes public on June 12 with an IPO share price of $135, the offering may make its billionaire founder, Elon Musk, the world’s first trillionaire (1).
While that staggering wealth accumulation grabs headlines, stories of ordinary employees set to make personal fortunes off their shares could prove even more intriguing.
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One of those workers — former SpaceX employee Juan Hernandez — is among them.
The 42-year-old immigrated from Mexico to the U.S. and told the Wall Street Journal that he “didn’t even know what SpaceX was when my friend was talking about it” back in 2015 (2).
A welder by trade, Hernandez applied for a $28-an-hour job as a contractor with SpaceX that year because “the money was sufficient at the time.”
Over the next decade, the WSJ noted, he parlayed his SpaceX equity into a stash of shares worth $880,000 and his own business ventures — while also currently working as a welder for Jeff Bezos’ rival Blue Origin rocket company.
How Hernandez grew his stake
Skilled trades like Hernandez are at the heart of SpaceX’s success since its founding in 2002.
“If you think about it, these are some of the most critical people for SpaceX to grow,” Ruchir Shah, the CEO of trades training app Skillcat, told Fortune (3). “It’s just as hard to find good welders and good machinists as it is a software developer — if not harder, because if there’s a massive shortage, so it makes sense that they were given equity.”
Hernandez’s equity, the WSJ reported, started with $10,000 in shares, which he added to from his own paycheck, leading to an amount that he said put him “in a comfortable position for life.”
That includes $880,000 worth of shares he still holds based on the $135 IPO price — along with a real estate business he started, as well as properties he purchased by selling some of his stock over the years (2).
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Hernandez, meanwhile, isn’t the only former SpaceX employee with a potential fortune on their hands as the IPO prepares to drop.
The New York Times highlighted that “more than 4,400 current and former SpaceX employees are likely to become millionaires in the IPO,” with about 400 of them topping out at more than $100 million (4).
