Korea Investment Partners Co. (KIP), one of South Korea’s largest venture capital and private equity firms, has invested $10 million in Elon Musk’s SpaceX, underlining the US company’s growth potential in reusable rockets and satellite internet. According to investment banking sources, KIP purchased shares worth $10 million from SpaceX employees through a secondary market transaction, valuing SpaceX at $400 billion. The deal was divided evenly between KIP’s Korea Investment Continuation Fund and Korea Investment US Signature Fund. Founded by Elon Musk in 2002, SpaceX develops launch vehicles such as the reusable Falcon 9, widely used by satellite operators and the US government. Its Starlink division has already deployed more than 7,000 low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites, serving about 5 million households worldwide. SpaceX is not new to Korea. In 2023, the company partnered with KT Corp. to launch the Starlink service locally. Earlier this year, Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT approved three cross-border agreements for LEO satellite communication, including Starlink Korea LLC’s contract with SpaceX, as well as partnerships between Hanwha Systems, KT SAT, and Europe’s Eutelsat/OneWeb. KIP has been a steady backer of US AI start-ups, investing in Musk’s xAI (approx. $10M in 2024), and taking stakes in Anthropic and Lambda in 2025. With this latest move, KIP is expanding beyond AI into defense, aerospace, and healthcare. As part of the Korea Investment Holdings group, KIP has more than 30 years of investment experience and maintains overseas offices in Silicon Valley, China, and Singapore. In 2024 alone, it invested about 104.5 billion won in foreign businesses. “We will actively seek promising overseas companies,” a company official said, stressing the firm’s ambition to strengthen its international portfolio. (ICE SEOUL)

Fonte notizia: KED