
For years, Russian investors have acquired stakes in Elon Musk’s SpaceX, often through opaque investment vehicles, according to an analysis of marketing materials, interviews, and documents shared by Russian firms.
One Russian firm, which currently offers SpaceX stakes on the open market, has been invested in the company since 2015, when SpaceX was valued at $12 billion. Today, SpaceX is valued at $350 billion.
Another firm promises to provide wealthy Russian investors a chance to invest in SpaceX. The offering, which requires a minimum investment of $10,000, currently has a waiting list.
A third U.S.-based firm that manages Russian investments in SpaceX is 90% owned by foreign nationals.
As the Western world's leading space launch and satellite internet company, SpaceX is an essential U.S. defense contractor. It has been awarded contracts to launch and produce many of the Pentagon's classified reconnaissance, communications, and missile warning satellites. For this reason, SpaceX maintains an informal policy of avoiding investments from citizens of Russia and other countries that the U.S. views as adversaries.
SpaceX is also the most valuable private company in the world, making the limited number of its available shares highly sought after. That demand has created prestige for funds that can offer investors exposure to SpaceX, particularly for Russian funds whose clients otherwise would be unable to buy into the fast-growing company.
Upon acquiring stakes in SpaceX, several Russian investment funds have, in turn, made shares available to virtually any retail Russian investor.
For access to SpaceX, several firms have relied on a Russian middleman, Pavel Cherkashin, who acquired shares of the company and then facilitated investments for Russian oligarchs, including at least one ally of Vladimir Putin who has been sanctioned by the U.S. government.
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
How Russians invest in SpaceX
The chief financial officer of SpaceX testified in Delaware last year that the company has an unofficial policy of avoiding "Russian, Chinese, Iranian, [and] North Korean" investors because they would complicate its ability to win U.S. government contracts.
In May, a number of top House Democrats sent a letter to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demanding answers about SpaceX's foreign investors. "Because SpaceX performs significant work for the federal government across the national security and civil space architectures, even the perception of a conflict of interest is very troubling," the lawmakers wrote.
However, as reported by ProPublica, a major SpaceX investor testified that the company deems it "acceptable" for Chinese investors to indirectly buy shares as long as they use opaque investment vehicles.
Investment funds with Russian clients have used similar schemes to sell stakes in SpaceX.
In a 2020 Russian language interview, Alex Markov, then the head of investment products at United Traders, openly explained how his Moscow-based firm sold Russian investors on SpaceX. "We do not offer investors direct participation in the register of shareholders, but they receive income from the growth of the company's capitalization," Markov told Forbes Russia, according to a Google translation. "United Traders buys a stake in the [special-purpose vehicle] through one of its counterparties, who comply with the requirements of US regulators and take into account the requirements of SpaceX."
(Investors who acquire indirect stakes in SpaceX, including through special-purpose vehicles, do not receive voting rights or direct access to internal company information.)
United Traders currently offers SpaceX shares to retail investors on its website, but only to users who register using a Russian IP address. The firm has held a stake in SpaceX since 2015, when it bought its stock from existing investors for $143.35 per share.
The Russian financial services company Finam, in partnership with U.S.-based firms, has similarly marketed SpaceX to Russian investors.
In 2024, Vedomosti, a Russian business news site, reported that Finam would make SpaceX shares available to Russians. The managing director of Finam told the publication that the firm signed an agreement with an unnamed partner who provided SpaceX securities through a separate fund.
Finam's website offers Russian investors the opportunity to "invest in the space industry leader—SpaceX." The offering requires a minimum investment of $10,000 and is currently waitlisted.
Finam provides Russian investors with SpaceX exposure through over-the-counter stakes in two funds invested in the company: Delaware-based Frontline One Capital and FinSight Ventures, which has offices in San Francisco and New York. Frontline One is an affiliate of the Noble Russia Finance Club, a Moscow-based investment management firm that said it first invested in SpaceX in September 2020.
Another notable firm invested in SpaceX is West Coast Equity Partners, a U.S.-based private equity firm cofounded by two former executives of Russian state entities. Alex Lazovsky, a cofounder of the firm, is an Israeli-American and the former chief executive of Rusnano Israel, a multibillion-dollar fund owned by the Russian government.
West Coast Equity Partners was also cofounded by Sergey Yushin, the former chief financial director of RusHydro, a hydroelectric company majority-owned by the Russian government. Until 1990, Yushin worked at Alrosa, a Russian state-owned diamond company that was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2022.
The middleman for Russian investment in SpaceX
Several Russians acquired stakes in SpaceX through Pavel Cherkashin, an asset manager based in the U.S. who has facilitated investments in U.S. firms for sanctioned Russian oligarchs. Educated in Moscow, Cherkashin moved to the San Francisco area in 2015 to launch the investment firm GVA Capital with his then-business partner Magomed Musaev. (As it happens, Musaev purchased Forbes Russia in 2018, two years before the outlet published the story that featured Cherkashin advertising how Russians can invest in SpaceX.)
The Noble Russian Finance Club has publicly described how it invests in SpaceX through special-purpose vehicles, as well as its decision to work with Cherkashin. The firm noted in a 2021 post on a Russian financial forum — translated using Google — that it "had several options to choose a partner for cooperation in the pre-IPO sector" but chose Cherkashin because of his Silicon Valley connections:
Cherkashin is at the heart of the startup scene. He has direct access to the founders and top management of many top-interest companies, having access to insider information, which can serve as a huge advantage for making an investment decision. Yes, yes, we did not misspeak. We are talking about the very insider information, the use of which on the stock exchange is a criminal offense! However, according to American law, the use of insider information is prohibited only in relation to public companies. And in American law, everything that is not prohibited is automatically permitted.
Arctic Ventures, a New York-based private equity fund with an office in Russia, also accessed SpaceX shares through Mindrock Capital, another one of Cherkashin's funds. To invest in SpaceX, "Arctic Ventures had to join a syndicate of investors with Cherkashin’s Mindrock Capital to participate in the March round, when SpaceX raised $221 million," the firm's founder told Forbes Russia in 2020. "Together, Arctic Ventures and Mindrock Capital raised $4 million. [We] then applied to buy another $2.8 million worth of [SpaceX] shares but have only been able to secure $1 million worth of shares so far."
In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Cherkashin's Mindrock Capital disclosed a fund called Arctic SX, a SpaceX investment vehicle. Arctic SX is 90% owned by non-U.S. citizens and is co-managed by Grigorii Trubkin. (Trubkin, a financial services professional certified by Russia's central bank, also markets investments in SpaceX through a separate company.)
Cherkashin's firm fined by U.S. Treasury
In 2017, GVA Capital, the other U.S. firm cofounded by Cherkashin, facilitated a 1% ownership stake in SpaceX for a Russian oligarch and close ally of Vladimir Putin. The oligarch, Suleiman Kerimov, has held other U.S. investments, including a stake in the startup Luminar, which manufactures autonomous driving technology and relies on Tesla for the majority of its revenue. Some of Kerimov's assets — held in a Delaware trust — were frozen by the Biden administration in 2022. But Bloomberg reported that Kerimov's stake in SpaceX had been moved by that point.
As for GVA Capital, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a $215 million penalty against the firm on June 12, 2025. The firm was, in part, fined for actively managing Kerimov's Luminar investment after he was sanctioned.
Aside from Kerimov, Cherkashin also served with a pair of well-connected Russians on the board of ICOBOX, a bitcoin company sued by the SEC in 2020 for an illegal securities sale. His fellow board members included the former chairman of the Russian Standard Bank and the son of a Russian oil executive.
Following a messy departure from GVA Capital, Cherkashin has sought to distance himself from Russian oligarchs, according to a 2023 report from the Washington Post.
His personal standing with Musk is unclear. However, during his time leading the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency, Musk recruited from within Cherkashin's orbit. Sam Corcos, a DOGE official who reportedly sought sensitive information from the Internal Revenue Service, is the husband of Varvara Russkova Corcos, a GVA Capital partner and advisor to Cherkashin's blockchain company.
Sounds MESSY. If the US government doesn't approve of investors in Russia, China, Iran and North Korea then why is it ok if investors from said countries, all adversaries of the US, buy stocks via "opaque" transactions??? I honestly feel that only Democrats in Congress HAVE OUR BACKS.
Excellent reporting! Thank you!
SpaceX should be nationalized for security reasons. So should Starlink: one civilian should not be able to control foreign policy by means of internet access.