ProPublica
Trump Administration
How Elon Musk’s SpaceX Secretly Allows Investment From China
by Joshua Kaplan and Justin Elliott
March 26, 2025
As a U.S. military contractor, SpaceX sees allowing Chinese ownership as
fraught. But it will allow the investment if it comes through secrecy hubs like the
Cayman Islands, court records say. “It is certainly a policy of obfuscation,” an
expert said.
Elon Musk’s aerospace giant SpaceX allows investors from China to buy stakes
in the company as long as the funds are routed through the Cayman Islands or
other offshore secrecy hubs, according to previously unreported court records.
The rare picture of SpaceX’s approach recently emerged in an under-the-radar
corporate dispute in Delaware. Both SpaceX’s chief financial officer and Iqbaljit
Kahlon, a major investor, were forced to testify in the case.
In December, Kahlon testified that SpaceX prefers to avoid investors from China
because it is a defense contractor. There is a major exception though, he said:
SpaceX finds it “acceptable” for Chinese investors to buy into the company
through offshore vehicles.
“The primary mechanism is that those investors would come through
intermediate entities that they would create or others would create,” Kahlon
said. “Typically they would set up BVI structures or Cayman structures or Hong
Kong structures and various other ones,” he added, using the acronym for the
British Virgin Islands. Offshore vehicles are often used to keep investors
anonymous.
Experts called SpaceX’s approach unusual, saying they were troubled by the
possibility that a defense contractor would take active steps to conceal foreign
ownership interests.
Kahlon, who has long been close to the company’s leadership, has said he
owns billions of dollars of SpaceX stock. His investment firm also acts as a
middleman, raising money from investors to buy highly sought SpaceX shares.
He has routed money from China through the Caribbean to buy stakes in
SpaceX multiple times, according to the court filings.
The legal dispute centers on an aborted 2021 deal, when SpaceX executives
grew angry after news broke that a Chinese firm was going to buy $50 million
of the company’s stock. SpaceX then had the purchase canceled. In separate
testimony, the rocket company’s CFO explained that the media coverage was
“not helpful for our company as a government contractor.” SpaceX’s business is
built on those contracts, with the U.S. government paying the company billions
to handle sensitive work like building a classified spy satellite network.
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Josh Kaplan can be reached by email at joshua.kaplan@propublica.org and by
Signal or WhatsApp at 734-834-9383. Justin Elliott can be reached by email at
justin@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240.
Company executives were concerned that coverage of the deal could lead to
problems with national security regulators in the U.S., according to Kahlon’s
testimony and a filing from his attorneys.
SpaceX, which also launches rockets for NASA and sells satellite internet
service, is perhaps the most important pillar of Musk’s fortune. His estimated
42% stake in the company is valued at around $150 billion. If he owned nothing
else, he’d still be richer than Bill Gates.
Federal law gives regulators broad power to oversee foreign investments in
tech companies and defense contractors. Companies only have to proactively
report Chinese investments in limited circumstances, and there aren’t hard and
fast rules for how much is too much. However, the government can initiate
investigations and then block or reverse transactions they deem a national
security threat. That authority typically does not apply to purely passive
investments in which a foreign investor is buying only a small slice of a
company. But experts said that federal officials regularly ask companies to add
up Chinese investments into an aggregate total.
The U.S. government charges that China has a systematic strategy of using
even minority investments to secure leverage over companies in sensitive
industries, as well as to gain privileged access to information about cutting-
edge technology. U.S. regulators view even private investors in China as
potential agents of the country’s government, experts said.
The new materials do not contain allegations that the Chinese investments in
SpaceX would violate the law or were directed by the Chinese government. The
company did not respond to detailed questions from ProPublica. Kahlon
declined to comment on the reasons for SpaceX’s approach.
It’s not uncommon for foreigners to buy U.S. stock through a vehicle in the
Cayman Islands, often to save money on taxes. But experts said it was strange
for the party on the other side of a deal — the U.S. company — to prefer such an
arrangement.
ProPublica spoke to 13 national security lawyers, corporate attorneys and
experts in Chinese finance about the SpaceX testimony. Twelve said they had
never heard of a U.S. company with such a requirement and could not think of a
purpose for it besides concealing Chinese ownership in SpaceX. The 13th said
they had heard of companies adopting the practice as a way to hide foreign
investment.
“It is certainly a policy of obfuscation,” Andrew Verstein, a UCLA law professor
who has studied defense contractors, said of the SpaceX testimony. “It hints at
potentially serious problems. We count on companies to be forthright with the
government about whether they’ve taken money from America’s rivals.”
The new material adds to the questions surrounding Musk’s extensive ties with
China, which have taken a new urgency since the world’s richest man joined the
Trump White House. Musk has regularly met with Communist Party officials in
China to discuss his business interests in the country, which is where about half
of Tesla cars are built.
Last week, The New York Times reported that Musk was scheduled to get a
briefing on secret plans for potential war between China and the U.S. The
Times later reported that the briefing was called off, and Trump denied it had
ever been scheduled. The president told reporters it would be wrong to show
the war plans to the businessman: “Elon has businesses in China, and he would
be susceptible perhaps to that,” Trump said.
The Delaware court records reveal SpaceX insiders’ intense preoccupation with
secrecy when it comes to China and detail a network of independent
middlemen peddling SpaceX shares to eager Chinese investors. (Unlike a
public company, SpaceX exercises significant control over who can buy into the
company, with the ability to block sales even between outside parties.)
But the case leaves unanswered the question of exactly what percentage of
SpaceX is owned by Chinese investors.
The Financial Times recently reported that Chinese investors had managed to
acquire small amounts of SpaceX stock and that they were turning to offshore
vehicles to do so. The deals were structured to limit the information investors
receive, the outlet said. The Delaware records reveal additional, previously
unreported Chinese investments in SpaceX but do not say how much they
were worth. The few Chinese investments in SpaceX where a dollar figure is
publicly known total well under $100 million.
The experts said the court testimony is puzzling enough that it raises the
possibility that SpaceX has more substantial ties to China than are publicly
known and is working to mask them from U.S. regulators. A more innocent
explanation, they said, is that SpaceX is seeking to avoid scrutiny of perfectly
legal investments by the media or Congress.
Once a welcome source of cash, Chinese investment in Silicon Valley has
become the subject of intense debate in Washington as hostility between the
two countries deepened in recent years. Corporate lawyers told ProPublica
they’d counsel their clients against requiring the use of offshore vehicles
because it could make it look like they are trying to hide something from the
government.
Bret Johnsen, the SpaceX CFO, testified in the Delaware dispute that the
company does not have a formal policy about accepting investments from
countries deemed adversaries by the U.S. government. Rather, he said, SpaceX
has “preferences that kind of feel like a policy.” Sensitive to how such financial
ties could make it “more challenging to win government contracts,” Johnsen
said that he asks fund managers to “stay away from Russian, Chinese, Iranian,
North Korean ownership interest.”
In the public portion of his deposition, Johnsen wasn’t asked whether routing
Chinese money offshore made such investments acceptable to SpaceX. But he
lent credibility to Kahlon, the investor who said that was enough to get the
green light. Johnsen said that he has a long-standing personal relationship with
Kahlon and that he’s discussed the company’s approach to Chinese ownership
with him. The CFO added that he trusts Kahlon to bring in only investors that
the company approves of.
Over the years, Kahlon has personally helped Chinese investors buy stakes in
SpaceX on “a number of occasions” through “proxies such as British Virgin
Islands- or Cayman Islands-based entities,” according to a filing from his
lawyers. He also knows of “many” other Chinese investors who own SpaceX
shares, the filing said. He learned about them through conversations with
investors and brokers, as well “from having viewed investor lists.”
Kahlon is a consummate SpaceX insider. He “has been with the company in
one form or fashion longer than I have,” said Johnsen, who’s worked at SpaceX
for 14 years. Early in his career, Kahlon worked for Peter Thiel at the same
venture capital firm that once employed JD Vance, and he first met with
SpaceX around 2007 a few years after it was founded.
Kahlon eventually opened his own firm called Tomales Bay Capital, becoming a
major player among the middlemen who cater to would-be investors in SpaceX.
He’s helped people like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos buy pieces of
the rocket company. He also said he has served as a “back channel” between
SpaceX and international regulators as the company sought to bring its satellite
internet products to countries like India.
Kahlon and Johnsen were forced to testify after the deal with a Chinese firm fell
apart in late 2021, sparking years of litigation. That year, Kahlon had the
opportunity to buy more than half a billion dollars of SpaceX stock from a West
Palm Beach private equity firm. Kahlon had already brought Chinese money
into SpaceX before, he testified, and he again turned to China as he gathered
funds to purchase the stake.
Kahlon soon connected with a Shanghai-based company called Leo Group,
short for “Love Each Other.” As Kahlon made his pitch during their first call, Leo
was told that “it would be best not to disclose the name of SpaceX,” an
executive at the Chinese company later testified. “They deemed that
information to be quite sensitive.”
Leo quickly sent Kahlon $50 million. He then messaged another business
associate in China: “Have any folks interested in spcex still?”
Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew
Kahlon testified that he was planning to tell Johnsen about the Leo investment
and expected the CFO to sign off on it. But the deal blew up after Leo
mentioned SpaceX in a regulatory filing that generated widespread coverage in
the Chinese business press. (Whether Leo had Kahlon’s permission to make
the disclosure is a matter of dispute.) In a panic, Kahlon enlisted a Leo vice
president to try to get the articles taken down. But when Johnsen and Tim
Hughes, SpaceX’s top in-house lobbyist, spotted the stories, they grew
alarmed.
“This is not helpful for our company as a government contractor,” the SpaceX
CFO later testified regarding the press attention. “It, in essence, arms our
competitors with something to use as a narrative against us.”
“In my entire professional career, this was literally the worst situation that I’ve
been in,” Kahlon said. “I failed at what I thought was a core responsibility in the
relationship we had.”
SpaceX ultimately decided to let Kahlon buy only a smaller portion of the stake,
purchasing much of the half-billion dollar investment itself. According to
contemporaneous messages and testimony from Kahlon, he was told that
decision was made by Musk. However, Kahlon continued to have a strong
relationship with SpaceX after the mishap, court records say, with the company
allowing his firm to keep buying a large quantity of shares.
Musk’s business interests in China extend far beyond SpaceX’s ownership
structure — a fact that has drawn criticism from Republican lawmakers over the
years. In 2022, after Tesla opened a showroom in the Chinese region where the
government runs Uyghur internment camps, then-Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted,
“Nationless corporations are helping the Chinese Communist Party cover up
genocide.”
In addition to Tesla’s sprawling factory in Shanghai, last year, almost 40% of
Tesla’s sales were to Chinese customers. The company has also secured major
tax breaks and regulatory victories in the country. In 2019, the Chinese premier
offered Musk the country’s equivalent of a green card.
In recent years, the billionaire has offered sympathetic remarks about China’s
desire to reclaim Taiwan and lavished praise on the government. “My
experience with the government of China is that they actually are very
responsive to the people,” Musk said toward the end of Trump’s first term. “In
fact, possibly more responsive to the happiness of people than in the U.S.”
Do you have any information we should know about Elon Musk’s businesses?
Josh Kaplan can be reached by email at joshua.kaplan@propublica.org and by
Signal or WhatsApp at 734-834-9383. Justin Elliott can be reached by email at
justin@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240.
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