These North Texas venture capital leaders invested in SpaceX

Phil Scully grew up milking cows on a dairy farm in New Hampshire and goes to Burning Man in his free time. On Friday, his Dallas-based space and defense tech venture capital firm racked in a fortune from SpaceX’s Wall Street debut.

At SpaceX’s IPO price of $135, Apurva Mehta’s Fort Worth-based Summit Peak Investments had more than $600 million invested in the rocket and technology company. They had $1.3 billion in assets under management as of March 31.

“It’s like green shoots, just seeing the beginning of spring and the potential,” said Scully, co-founder and general partner at Balerion Space Ventures, while his phone blew up on Friday. “I think space is enabling some things that we could have never done with terrestrial infrastructure.”

SpaceX debuted with a valuation of $1.77 trillion, the largest-ever initial public offering. The company has since surged to a valuation of more than $2 trillion, with a stock price of more than $210 on Tuesday. The event made venture capitalists, institutional investors and individuals who invested millions to billions of dollars richer while also creating a torrent of new wealth for SpaceX employees who own stock. The IPO made CEO Elon Musk history’s first trillionaire.

Investors in North Texas — from venture capital firms to individuals and family offices — were among those who got in on SpaceX early. Oil and gas and real estate have long been the driving sources of wealth in Texas. But over the last several years, tech and financial hubs have emerged as the state has attracted business leaders from California’s technology sector and New York’s financial district, many of whom prefer the state’s friendlier business and tax environment. 

“What we’re seeing in Texas today is different than what we would have seen in Texas not just 20 years ago, but five years ago,” said Brian Thomas, regional managing director at PNC. “What we’ve seen over the last decade or so, but particularly turbocharged since COVID, is these tech ecosystems bubbling up.”

Scully, 50, moved to Dallas from Los Angeles in 2021 and Mehta, 44, moved to Fort Worth from New York in 2011.

A trusted mentor at The Capital Group, Scully’s former workplace, called him “delusional” when around eight years ago he told her he wanted to get serious about investing in outer space.

Scully did more research — including on a company that wanted to put rovers on the moon — and kept trying to win her approval. Eventually, he said, his passion won her over.

“She was just like, ‘Look, you’ve got young girls, go build The Capital Group in space,’” he said. “The whole idea of doing that, it’s just crazy, right?”

He started the fund that became Balerion with a few others around six years ago, and launched Balerion two years later. Today, Balerion has more than 30 companies in its portfolio focused on aerospace and defense, which Scully describes as “futuristic technologies.” Balerion aims to invest in companies that generate significant profits in seven to ten years. 

Scully is excited about the “democratization” of SpaceX and other companies that are set to follow. Even his parents could invest in it if they wanted to, he said. Scully grew up working at a dairy farm near his home in rural New Hampshire, where his parents still live. The experience gave him a “personality” that helped him shape Belarion: “very hardworking, very disciplined. Don’t expect positive outcomes all the time.”

“I’m sort of like the black sheep in the family, investing in this new world,” Scully said.

Mehta grew up in New Jersey. He knew he wanted to be in the investment world after participating in a middle school business class stock market competition. 

He went to George Washington University’s business school and worked in investment banking at Lehman Brothers. He switched to investment management in 2008 as the director of portfolio investments at The Juilliard School. That’s where he met Patrick O’Connor, and together, they co-founded Summit Peak. 

“It’s an atypical path to being in the venture world, but it’s been a fun journey, and I’m thrilled to have a partner to do it alongside of,” Mehta said.

The fund-of-funds portfolio is intentionally diverse and covers fields such as AI, deep technology, cybersecurity and healthcare.

Summit Peak can leverage SpaceX’s spot in its portfolio to draw funding from the endowments, foundations and family offices it works with, Mehta said.

“Having this exposure as significant as it is in our portfolio, it just points to a more concrete, ‘We have access in this next generation of tech titans,’” said Mehta. “Hopefully, this makes it easier for us to tell our story.”

Mehta and Scully see SpaceX as a company that will unlock potential across a range of industries, including AI technology and data centers, which Musk has said he wants to put in outer space.

Scully also believes that Starlink could spur major advancements in robotics, a field he says has been stymied by the limited capacity of technology on Earth. He’s currently fascinated by a company that makes autonomous cows.

“The new vehicle can bring in a number of days all the satellites that Falcon Nine can bring in a year,” said Scully. “The new Starlink terminal, we believe it may enable a robotic infrastructure renaissance.”

After modeling out Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite business, Balerion became a SpaceX investor in the last two years. Balerion and Summit Peak are subject to a lock-up period for SpaceX investors.

Summit Peak made multiple investments between 2019 and 2025 through underlying investment partnerships, funds and sidecar vehicles. The firm’s underlying managers had been investing in SpaceX as early as 2008, which allowed Mehta to learn information about the company before it was publicly available.

“In 2020 you could see that SpaceX was building something special,” Mehta said. “I think a lot of that has come to fruition over the last six years.”

He said SpaceX has been well-managed by Musk and SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell, pointing to what he calls the “seamless” launch of Starlink, SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI and its deals with Anthropic and Google.

The leaders at SpaceX “are at the forefront of this arms race in the AI space,” Mehta said.

Scully and Mehta are celebrating, but ultimately, they’re determined to find the next SpaceX — or, rather, the next Elon Musk.

Scully sees potential in Bridgit Mendler, the former Disney Channel actress who started space infrastructure company Northwood, Isaiah Taylor, founder of nuclear power company Valar Atomics and Tom Mueller, the first SpaceX employee and CEO of space tech company Impulse Space. 

Summit Peak is invested in OpenAI and Anthropic, which are also expected to go public, and more recently, Impulse Space.

Soon, venture capital firms will use their new capital from SpaceX to invest in other AI-related technologies, said Jim Schmelter, PNC Texas’ investment director. He added that there are fewer publicly traded companies than there were in previous decades, meaning that venture capital and private equity will continue to play a significant role in the technology sector’s growth.

But with new wealth comes personal responsibilities, too, Schmelter said. They’ll need help with more sophisticated tax and estate planning to preserve their wealth. As with any investor, Schmelter will advise his clients that benefit from SpaceX to diversify their investment portfolios to make sure their new wealth will last for future generations.

“They want to have enough capital that they know that they’re going to be okay, that they’re going to be able to do everything that they want to do for the rest of their life,” said Schmelter.

Outside of his personal earnings, Mehta is ready for a torrent of questions from investors as Summit Peak prepares to distribute cash from SpaceX to investors.

“It’s certainly an emotional roller coaster,” Mehta said. “There is not a day that has gone by since early December of last year that SpaceX hasn’t been a topic of discussion. This is just validation of, you know, the business that we built and giving investors access to that.”

Scully, a Highland Park resident, said he doesn’t need much besides air conditioning.

“I just think about owning things for a very, very long time, and having investments into really unique companies that are durable,” Scully said. “I don’t think about wealth, like, ‘I want to go out and buy something.’”

Scully knows he’s not the only one geeking out over infrastructure for outer space. People went crazy for SpaceX content whenever Balerion posted about it on LinkedIn, Scully said. 

He believes the intrigue stems in part from people in the finance sector who devoured science fiction novels or dreamed of going to outer space as children. Even his daughter’s middle school friends know about SpaceX, and he guesses that some of them dream of working there.

“SpaceX is this unique content that people have an insatiable appetite for,” Scully said.