SpaceX employees team up to drive down prices and seek tax-saving tools in preparation for IPO listing.

More than a thousand current and former SpaceX employees have joined forces to collectively pressure wealth management institutions for lower fees and more sophisticated tax optimization tools, preparing for the wealth creation frenzy triggered by SpaceX’s IPO.

According to Bloomberg, this group is negotiating with over 20 wealth management firms and private banks, aiming to reduce asset management fees below 0.5%, which is significantly lower than the industry standard of 1%. Organizers describe this as “leveraging collective bargaining power” to obtain “substantially reduced advisor fees.”

This action is closely timed with SpaceX’s listing plan. SpaceX could go public as soon as this month, targeting a fundraising scale of $75 billion and a potential valuation of at least $1.8 trillion, likely setting a record as the largest IPO ever. As the wealth-creating event approaches, collective bargaining among employees concerning wealth management is accelerating.

This collective negotiation model is expected to reshape how startup employees manage IPO-generated wealth and provide a reference for employees at companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

Thousands Unite, Asset Value Estimated at $20 Billion

According to informed sources, the group operates in a private Slack channel, organized by a former SpaceX engineer.

Emails sent to wealth advisors earlier this year revealed that the group had already exceeded 200 people, representing at least $2 billion in wealth. Later, sources say, the group expanded significantly, now representing asset values up to $20 billion.

Most of the negotiation work is led by former SpaceX engineer Aisha Ayoub. Negotiations include major banks like Morgan Stanley, as well as registered investment advisory firms such as Creative Planning and Corient.

The group has explicitly excluded advisors affiliated with brokerages—citing "complex cost structures"—and robo-advisor platforms, believing that the latter are "not suitable for complex needs like liquidity, tax, or concentrated position planning."

Tax Optimization Tools Prioritized, Complex Financial Strategies Are Core Demands

Employees are seeking far more than just lower fees. Documents show they are focused on complex strategies like equity-backed financing and direct indexing, echoing techniques used by hedge funds and family offices to defer capital gains taxes.

Specifically, Variable Prepaid Forward Contracts (VPFC) are among the tools considered—a loan-like structure allowing shareholders to borrow cash against their shares without triggering taxable events via sale.

Additionally, option strategies such as “collars” and “box spreads” are being evaluated; combined, they can form a synthetic alternative to VPFCs, meeting the dual goal of accessing cash while limiting downside risk.

Diversification is also a key topic. Direct indexing allows employees to hold individual index constituents directly, rather than through ETFs, thus avoiding further concentration in SpaceX and enabling selective harvesting of tax losses on single stocks.

This demand reflects a common challenge among SpaceX employees: their holdings are heavily concentrated in a single company, and most stock options or restricted stock units will vest according to a schedule after the IPO.

A Wealth Creation Template That May Extend to OpenAI and Anthropic

Industry professionals believe the collective bargaining practice by SpaceX employees is highly replicable, especially as OpenAI and Anthropic prepare for their own listings, making this model particularly noteworthy as an example.

Brian Werner, Chief Investment Officer at Winthrop Partners, commented:

“The truly intriguing thing here isn’t just the employees seeking financial advice, but their realization of their collective buying power, and deploying it to secure access to professional services. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see employees of fast-growing private companies organizing in similar ways.”

Dominic Corabi, co-founder of Wedmont Private Capital, holds a similar view:

“Grouping together as a collective and negotiating from a position of strength will undoubtedly become mainstream. They’ll get better terms and pricing from custodians and product providers.”

This wave of collective bargaining nearly coincides with reports that SpaceX executives are pushing to reduce IPO underwriting bank fees, reflecting the company’s consistently tough negotiating stance on cost matters.

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