On June 12, 2026, SpaceX completed its initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq, raising approximately $75 billion with a valuation of about $1.75 trillion—the largest IPO in market history.
SpaceX may be just the beginning, as OpenAI, Anthropic, and a growing number of artificial intelligence companies are expected to go public later this year.
The question that directly concerns Greek pension funds is not whether SpaceX is a good or bad investment. It is whether existing governance frameworks are equipped to manage a new generation of IPOs with similar characteristics.
How SpaceX Enters Portfolios Without an Active Investment Strategy
Several Greek pension funds invest part or all of their equity portfolio through passive mutual funds that track international indices. Passive investing means that the fund manager does not select individual stocks but rather replicates the composition of a benchmark index at low cost. The rationale is clear: low management costs, broad geographic diversification, and transparency regarding methodology.
However, this approach has a side effect that is often overlooked. When a company goes public and meets the criteria for inclusion in an index, it is automatically added to all portfolios that track that index. No board resolution or manager’s instruction is required; inclusion occurs automatically, meaning it constitutes an indirect allocation of capital without an explicit investment decision. It is worth noting that different index providers apply different inclusion criteria.
Three Risks for Greek Pension Funds
The inclusion of SpaceX—and the artificial intelligence companies expected to follow, such as Anthropic and OpenAI—in the portfolios of Greek pension funds raises three distinct risks.
1. Index Providers: Neutral Arbiters or Commercial Actors?
The greatest risk for Greek pension funds may not be the companies included in the index, but the motives of the people who decide which ones to include. Most investors view index providers as neutral arbiters who apply objective criteria.
In reality, however, index providers are businesses with specific commercial motives: their revenue comes from licensing their indices to passive mutual fund providers and asset managers, and the more funds that track an index, the more valuable—and profitable—that index becomes.
There are already specific examples that substantiate this concern. In early 2026, both the Nasdaq-100 and FTSE Russell launched public consultations on changes to their IPO inclusion methodology — changes designed to allow for the faster inclusion of companies with a low free float but high total market capitalization, such as SpaceX.
In May 2026, the Nasdaq-100 officially adopted a “Fast Entry” rule for IPOs that meet specific size criteria: stocks are evaluated for inclusion as early as the 7th trading day and are included on the 15th—instead of the traditional waiting period of three to twelve months. FTSE Russell followed suit with similar changes in May 2026.
Notably, the S&P 500—the index with the largest passive exposure globally—resisted the pressure and announced in June 2026 that it would not change its methodology, maintaining the profitability requirement for inclusion.
This difference has direct consequences: a fund tracking the Nasdaq-100 already has exposure to SpaceX, while a fund tracking the S&P 500 may not. The question today is whether these safeguards can withstand the pressure of an environment where an index provider’s commercial survival depends on being first—and not merely correct.
2. Valuation Risk
SpaceX entered the markets at a particularly high valuation relative to its fundamentals. In a report dated June 2, 2026, Morningstar—one of the world’s most recognized independent equity research firms—estimated the company’s intrinsic value at approximately $780 billion, or $63 per share. This represents a discount of approximately 53–55% relative to the IPO valuation of $1.75 trillion.
This assessment is not an isolated opinion. The Danish AkademikerPension—one of Denmark’s largest occupational pension funds, with assets of approximately $25 billion—independently concluded that the value of SpaceX “cannot reasonably exceed $1 trillion,” or about 57% of its IPO price.
Why does this matter to a fund investor? If the market begins to narrow the gap between the price and the fundamentals highlighted by Morningstar, the decline in SpaceX’s share price will directly translate into a lower net asset value (NAV) for the index that includes it, and this decrease will be directly reflected in the value of each member’s share in the fund’s investment portfolio, which, in a defined-contribution (DC) pension plan, determines—without any guarantee—the amount of their future pension — depending on SpaceX’s weighting in that particular index at that time.
3. Governance Risk
Elon Musk is expected to retain, through a dual-class share structure, approximately 42% of the company’s share capital but approximately 79% of its total voting rights. The result is that a single shareholder can control the majority of the company’s decisions while holding less than half of the share capital.
For pension funds, this means financial exposure without any meaningful corporate influence. A prime example of an institutional response is the aforementioned Danish AkademikerPension, which officially excluded SpaceX from its investment portfolio on May 29, 2026 —even before the IPO was completed—describing its governance structure as “catastrophic” in statements by Chief Investment Officer Anders Schelde.
Similar concerns were expressed in a joint letter dated May 13, 2026, by three major U.S. pension funds—the New York State Common Retirement Fund, the New York City Comptroller’s Office, and CalPERS—with total assets under management exceeding $1 trillion—describing SpaceX’s governance structure as “unprecedented and extreme.”
What steps should be considered
SpaceX signals a broader shift in the evolution of public markets—toward larger companies with lower free-float percentages, tighter founder control, and higher valuations. This has a direct practical implication: for a board of directors that opts for a passive strategy, investment oversight does not end with the selection of the index—it begins there.
Three specific actions are worth considering:
1. Reviewing the benchmark
The chosen benchmark is not merely a technical parameter—it is a fundamental investment decision. Boards of Directors must therefore know exactly which indices their managers track, how often their composition is reviewed, and what the process is for adding new companies — and, furthermore, to develop structured evaluation methodologies that go beyond a simple comparison of returns.
For example, such an evaluation might include: concentration analysis—that is, the percentage of the index accounted for by the largest companies and how this has changed over time; an assessment of the inclusion methodology, with an emphasis on whether the criteria are clear, consistent, and resilient to commercial pressures; and a comparison of alternative indices that apply different weighting or exclusion criteria.
2. Active Corporate Governance
Passive investing does not mean taking a passive stance toward the companies in which a fund invests. Even when the manager mechanically replicates an index without selecting individual stocks, the fund remains a shareholder with voting rights in every company included in the index—and this right can be exercised either directly or through explicit instructions to the investment manager.
When dealing with companies such as SpaceX, exercising voting rights is one of the few mechanisms available through which a fund can institutionally express its concerns. When enough funds coordinate this action—through joint letters, collective voting, or public interventions — they gain collective bargaining power that none would have individually, precisely because, collectively, they represent a larger share of the equity capital.
The benefit for members is substantial: better corporate governance in the companies where their savings are invested reduces, in the long term, the risk of mismanagement, financial scandals, and decisions that benefit management at the expense of other shareholders.
3. Strengthening communication with members
Members have the right to know what their investment entails. The greater the weight of companies like SpaceX in benchmark indices, the more difficult it is for a member to understand exactly where their contributions are invested by reading only the general title of the investment strategy, such as “global stocks” or “developed market stocks.”
Changes in the composition of indices—such as the inclusion of SpaceX—must be reflected in regular updates to members, using simple and understandable language, not just in technical reports. This is not merely a matter of transparency; it is also a matter of alignment: Boards of Directors must review, at reasonable intervals, whether the portfolio’s composition—and specific companies that are the subject of intense public debate regarding their governance— remains consistent with the values and expectations of the membership they represent, and must have a mechanism in place to document and address such concerns when they are raised.
* Christos Bakas is a Senior Retirement Investment Strategist
* Konstantinos Nikolaou is Managing Director at Prudential B. Marghios & Partners
Note: This text reflects the authors’ personal analysis and does not constitute investment advice.
Sources
https://capital.com/en-int/learn/ipo/spacex-ipo
https://www.ashurst.com/en/insights/nasdaq-proposes-new-fast-entry-rule-for-the-nasdaq-100-index/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/new-rule-could-fast-track-spacex-ipo-for-nasdaq-index-inclusion-172327734.html
https://spotgamma.com/spacex-ipo-index-changes-spotgamma/
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/morningstar-values-spacex-780-billion-133514814.html
https://fortune.com/2026/06/03/spacex-ipo-stocks-elon-musk-morningstar-overvalued-half-smart-investors-wait-buy/
https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/why-we-think-spacex-ipo-is-overvalued
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-29/danish-pension-fund-blacklists-spacex-citing-governance-issues
https://thenextweb.com/news/danish-pension-spacex-blacklist-governance-overvalued
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https://www.osc.ny.gov/press/releases/2026/05/new-york-state-comptroller-dinapoli-calpers-ceo-marcie-frost-and-nyc-comptroller-mark-levine-raise