Shadowing Practice: Larry Ellison, Jack Dorsey, A Saudi Prince And Other Unexpected Winners From The SpaceX IPO - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Today on Forbes, Larry Ellison, Jack Dorsey, the Saudi Prince, and other unexpected winners from the SpaceX IPO.
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SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 per share Thursday, implying a $1.8 trillion market cap for the company.
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That boosted Musk's net worth by $188 billion to an estimated $982 billion, according to Forbes' calculations.
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After what was a successful IPO Friday, SpaceX shares landed at just over $161 at market close that day.
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That made Elon Musk the first trillionaire in world history, worth $1.1 trillion, according to Forbes' Real-Time Billionaires List,
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as of Friday at 4.30 p.m.
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Eastern Time.
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Musk, who serves as chairman, CEO, and chief technical officer of SpaceX,
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owns 4.8 billion shares of the Rocketmaker .
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He has another 350 million stock options with an exercise price of $8.40 per share ,
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giving him a 38% stake in the company .
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Forbes has been valuing Musk's estimated 40% stake before dilution from the public offering at around $500 billion,
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based on the $1.25 trillion valuation of SpaceX's merger with Musk's artificial intelligence and social media company XAI in February.
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XAI previously merged with X, formerly Twitter, in March 2025.
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Musk also owns just over 10% of the $1.5 trillion market cap Tesla,
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worth $165 billion, plus options to acquire another nearly 8% stake, worth $114 billion.
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Not included in Forbes' estimate of Musk's net worth is performance-based restricted shares
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that could boost his stakes in SpaceX and Tesla to 47% and 29%,
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respectively, before taxes and the cost of unlocking the restricted shares.
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To earn all that stock, Musk will have to achieve lofty goals like growing SpaceX and Tesla's market caps to $7.5 trillion and $8.5 trillion,
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respectively, and establishing a permanent human colony on Mars with at least 1 million inhabitants.
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Musk is by far the biggest winner, but he isn't the only person whose fortunes soared into orbit thanks to SpaceX.
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Others include a Saudi prince, Twitter's co-founder, and several SpaceX executives and board members.
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The newest member of the 3-comma club is SpaceX's longtime chief financial officer,
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Brett Johnson, who as of Friday morning is worth an estimated $1.2 billion,
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thanks to his .07% stake in the rocket maker, including options.
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The accountant joins PayPal co-founder, venture capitalist, and longtime SpaceX investor
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and board member Luke Nosek as one of two new billionaires revealed since the rocket maker filed its IPO prospectus.
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Nosek is now worth at least $3.4 billion, based on his SpaceX stake of at least 0.19%.
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Also listed in the prospectus is the rocket maker's longtime president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell, who was revealed to own just 0.1% of the company,
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lower than Forbes' initial 0.27% estimate.
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Still, Shotwell, the firm's 11th employee, is doing just fine, with a net worth of $1.7 billion.
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A number of SpaceX's biggest winners were either Twitter or XAI investors,
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including Prince Al-Walid bin Talal al-Saoud of Saudi Arabia and President Trump's Middle East envoy Stephen Whitcoff,
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who both became SpaceX investors in February
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when Musk merged his rocket maker with his artificial intelligence
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and social media business XAI Holdings in a deal that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion.
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The February transaction, which valued SpaceX at $1 trillion and XAI Holdings at $250 billion,
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less than a year after Musk created XAI Holdings in March
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2025 by combining his artificial intelligence startup XAI with his social media company X,
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formerly Twitter, in a $113 billion merger that some critics characterized as a bailout of the latter company.
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That's because that deal valued X at $33 billion,
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which was almost exactly what Musk and minority investors like Prince Al-Walid and Whitcoff paid for the company, excluding debt financing, in 2022.
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Investor Fidelity, meanwhile, had X valued at just under $10 billion at the end of 2024.
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Other big SpaceX IPO winners include high-profile venture capital, hedge fund, and private equity billionaires whose investment firms bet on SpaceX long ago.
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That includes Musk's close friend and SpaceX director,
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Antonio Gracias, whose Valor Equity Partners owns a 3.7% stake worth $68 billion as of Friday morning.
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Another winner is Oracle's co-founder, chairman, and chief technology officer Larry Ellison, who invested $1 billion in Musk's Twitter takeover in October 2022,
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after concluding his nearly four-year term as a director of Musk's electric vehicle maker Tesla two months earlier.
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Forbes estimates that Ellison still owns Tesla shares worth more than $14 billion.
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He owns an estimated 0.15% stake of SpaceX, worth an estimated $2.7 billion as of Friday morning.
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Jack Dorsey is another winner.
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He co-founded Twitter in 2006 and was the company's CEO until 2008, when he left to co-found payments company Block,
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formerly known as Square, a year later.
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He returned as Twitter's CEO in 2015 and served in that role for another six years before resigning for good in 2021.
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Dorsey stepped down from Twitter's board in May 2022
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but rolled forward his nearly $1 billion stake in the company when Musk took it private five months later.
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His estimated SpaceX stake is 0.14%, worth an estimated $2.6 billion.
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For full coverage and to see our whole list of some of the biggest winners from SpaceX's Friday IPO, check out Matt Duro's piece on Forbes.com.
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This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes, thanks for tuning in.
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you

About This Lesson

In this lesson, you will focus on enhancing your English listening and speaking skills by practicing with a recent video discussing the unexpected winners from the SpaceX IPO. By shadowing the transcript, you will not only improve your pronunciation but also gain a deeper understanding of financial vocabulary and the context surrounding high-profile figures like Elon Musk and Larry Ellison. This practice will help you become more comfortable with complex sentences and industry-specific terms while learning how to articulate your thoughts clearly in English.

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

  • IPO: Initial Public Offering, the process through which a company offers shares to the public for the first time.
  • Market Cap: The total market value of a company's outstanding shares, often used to gauge a company's size.
  • Stake: The percentage of ownership a person has in a company, usually measured in shares.
  • Net Worth: The total assets minus total liabilities of an individual, indicating their financial health.
  • Billionaire: An individual whose net worth is at least one billion units of currency.
  • Investor: Someone who allocates capital with the expectation of a financial return.
  • Merger: The combination of two companies into a single entity, often to enhance competitiveness.
  • Stakeholder: Any individual or entity with an interest in the success of a company.

Practice Tips

To maximize your learning experience with this video through shadowspeak techniques, follow these practice tips:

  • Start by watching the video once without looking at the transcript. Focus on the overall message and tone.
  • When you commence shadowing, play the video at a slower speed if necessary, especially if the speaker's pace is fast. This will help you catch all words and phrases clearly.
  • Repeat each sentence immediately after hearing it. This shadow speech technique ensures you mimic the pronunciation, intonation, and rhythm of the original speaker.
  • Pay attention to pauses and emphasis in the speaker’s voice. Identifying these patterns will improve your own speaking fluency.
  • Use the vocabulary list provided to enrich your understanding of specific terms that frequently appear in financial discussions. Try to incorporate these terms into your discussions, either in spoken or written forms.
  • Finally, consider discussing the content with a partner or tutor. Engaging in conversation will reinforce your learning and give you the chance to use new vocabulary actively.

By practicing with this shadowing site, you can significantly enhance your English speaking abilities and feel more confident in navigating complex topics in conversation. Remember to enjoy the process while you learn English with YouTube!

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.