SpaceX SPV investors won’t know their true holdings until post-IPO lock-ups lift
SpaceX SPV investors won’t know their true holdings until post-IPO lock-ups lift
SpaceX 特殊目的载体（SPV）投资者在 IPO 锁定期结束前无法获知真实持股情况
SpaceX makes its public debut on Friday and some investors who backed the company through special purpose vehicles (SPVs) still don’t know how many shares they’re entitled to or whether they’ll get any shares at all. SpaceX 将于周五首次公开亮相，但一些通过特殊目的载体（SPV）投资该公司的投资者，至今仍不清楚自己有权获得多少股份，甚至不确定是否能拿到股份。
Investing through SPVs, where multiple parties pool their money to invest in a single company, has been around for a while. But SpaceX represents an unprecedented case of an IPO with multiple layers of these vehicles. Since demand for SpaceX allocations has been so high in recent years, investors in an SPV have occasionally formed a new SPV from their shares, creating a structure sometimes stacked four or five layers deep. 通过 SPV 进行投资（即多方汇集资金投资于同一家公司）已经存在一段时间了。但 SpaceX 的 IPO 是一个前所未有的案例，涉及多层此类载体。由于近年来对 SpaceX 配额的需求极高，SPV 的投资者有时会利用其持有的股份组建新的 SPV，从而形成了有时多达四五层的嵌套结构。
SpaceX will be the first major test of the legitimacy of multi-layer SPV. In recent months, Anthropic and Anduril have announced that they are disallowing these structures. Nearly a dozen SPV managers and secondary market investors who spoke to TechCrunch said that backers in lower-tier vehicles might find they own fewer shares than they think or, in rare cases, that they may not receive any shares at all. SpaceX 将成为检验多层 SPV 合法性的首次重大考验。近几个月来，Anthropic 和 Anduril 已宣布禁止此类结构。近十几位接受 TechCrunch 采访的 SPV 管理人和二级市场投资者表示，底层载体的支持者可能会发现自己拥有的股份比预想的要少，在极少数情况下，甚至可能根本拿不到任何股份。
In most situations, these investors won’t learn how many SpaceX shares they actually own until the company’s rolling lock-ups, scheduled to take place over about four months, begin to lift. That’s because SPV managers won’t begin distributing shares to investors in these vehicles until they get access to the shares themselves, sources told TechCrunch. 在大多数情况下，这些投资者要等到公司大约四个月的滚动锁定期开始解除后，才能知道自己实际拥有多少 SpaceX 股份。消息人士告诉 TechCrunch，这是因为 SPV 管理人只有在自己获得股份后，才会开始向载体内的投资者分配股份。
Lock-up agreements prevent insiders, including employees, their friends and family, and venture investors, from selling shares for a set period after an IPO to prevent excessive selling pressure on the stock. The first-layer SPV will have 30 days to distribute stock to its investors, said Justin Ernest, founder and managing partner of Sabertooth Capital, a firm that invests primarily in first-layer SPVs. 锁定期协议旨在防止内部人士（包括员工、其亲友以及风险投资者）在 IPO 后的一段特定时间内抛售股票，以避免股价承受过大的抛售压力。主要投资于第一层 SPV 的 Sabertooth Capital 创始人兼管理合伙人 Justin Ernest 表示，第一层 SPV 将有 30 天的时间向其投资者分配股票。
Consequently, the next layer down likely won’t get its shares for as long as 30 days, meaning the vehicle below that must wait even longer to deliver stock to its own backers. For the final disbursement, the bottom SPV layer may have to wait eight or nine months, Ernest estimates. 因此，下一层载体可能需要长达 30 天才能拿到股份，这意味着再下一层的载体必须等待更长时间才能向其支持者交付股票。Ernest 估计，对于最终的分配，底层的 SPV 可能需要等待八到九个月。
A secondary investor, who asked to remain anonymous, told TechCrunch that some investors in “messy” multi-layered SPVs will be surprised to learn that some of the shares they expect to get will be “eroded by fees” pocketed by the SPV. Ideally, the SPV manager communicates with the investors in their vehicle from the IPO date on. “Problem is you have a communication train with each person only knowing what’s going on in the layer above them,” the secondary investor said. 一位要求匿名的二级市场投资者告诉 TechCrunch，一些处于“混乱”多层 SPV 中的投资者会惊讶地发现，他们预期获得的部分股份会被 SPV 收取的“费用所侵蚀”。理想情况下，SPV 管理人应从 IPO 之日起与载体内的投资者保持沟通。这位二级市场投资者说：“问题在于，沟通链条中每个人只知道自己上一层的情况。”
In short, the structural ownership of these vehicles has become so highly convoluted that even the best-intentioned SPV sponsors may end up inadvertently misleading their investors. The biggest concern for downstream SPV investors is that they may not get any shares in SpaceX. 简而言之，这些载体的结构性所有权已经变得极其复杂，以至于即使是初衷良好的 SPV 发起人，最终也可能在无意中误导了投资者。下游 SPV 投资者最担心的是，他们可能根本拿不到 SpaceX 的任何股份。
Giovanni Pennetta, the manager of Sestante Capital, was recently sentenced to four years in prison for fabricating access to non-existent allocations in the defense tech company Anduril. The fear, of course, is that Pennetta is not the only deceptive sponsor out there. Investors at the bottom of these structures essentially had to confirm that every single manager above them was legitimate. But given the messy structures of these deals, it’s likely some buyers didn’t vet the entire chain. Sestante Capital 的经理 Giovanni Pennetta 最近因伪造国防科技公司 Anduril 的虚假配额而被判处四年监禁。当然，人们担心的是，Pennetta 可能并非唯一的欺诈性发起人。处于这些结构底层的投资者本质上必须确认他们之上的每一位经理都是合法的。但考虑到这些交易混乱的结构，很可能有些买家并没有对整个链条进行尽职调查。
“A friend just shared in confidence – they bought SpaceX through a 2 layer SPV in 2021. The returns are supposed to be worth any fees, the only problem – the SPV manager stopped responding to emails or calls,” Nick Davidov, founder of venture firm Davidovs Venture Collective, posted on X last month. He wrote that the investor hasn’t heard from the SPV manager for a year. “一位朋友私下分享说，他们在 2021 年通过一个两层 SPV 购买了 SpaceX。回报率本应足以抵消任何费用，唯一的问题是——SPV 管理人不再回复邮件或电话，”风险投资公司 Davidovs Venture Collective 的创始人 Nick Davidov 上个月在 X 上发帖称。他写道，该投资者已经一年没有收到 SPV 管理人的消息了。
Idan Miller, managing partner at the secondary market Unicorns Exchange, is convinced that a few other bad actors will be revealed once lock ups expire. “Once the lock up of the shares is removed, and these SPVs will start selling the shares, there will be some vehicles that will be revealed as scammers or fraud,” Miller told TechCrunch. 二级市场 Unicorns Exchange 的管理合伙人 Idan Miller 确信，一旦锁定期结束，其他一些不良行为者将会浮出水面。Miller 告诉 TechCrunch：“一旦股份锁定期解除，这些 SPV 开始出售股份，就会有一些载体被揭露为骗局或欺诈。”