Late Stage Capital sells $300,000 SpaceX shares without notice

A New Jersey investor who thought he owned $300,000 worth of SpaceX shares discovered in 2024 that his firm had quietly sold them off without telling him.

Ram Rupireddy wired $17,250 to Late Stage Capital in 2020 to buy pre-IPO SpaceX shares when the company was valued at $58 billion. By the time SpaceX went public in 2026 at a $1.77 trillion valuation, Rupireddy expected his 2,500 shares to be worth about $300,000. Instead, Late Stage Capital sold his stake in 2024 for just $45,450 and never sent him a warning. He still has company documents from 2024 and 2025 showing he owned the shares, and he has not been reimbursed.

Late Stage Capital is one of roughly 100 firms that used special purpose vehicles (SPVs) to promise early access to hot private companies like SpaceX. But many SPVs only hold indirect stakes, creating layers between investors and actual shares. In this case, a Bahamas firm called Capital Truth owned part of the SPV that held SpaceX shares. When Capital Truth sold its stake to Late Stage Capital, the SpaceX shares vanished from Rupireddy’s account without notice. The Wall Street Journal found nearly 100 investors with the same complaint and some have filed SEC reports. Late Stage Capital did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The episode shows the risks of investing in pre-IPO shares through lightly regulated SPVs. Investors can lose money even when paperwork still shows ownership, and firms may avoid transparency until it is too late. SEC filings and direct ownership records are scarce in these deals, leaving buyers with little recourse when things go wrong.