Photo = Captured from Nikkei
Nippon Life Insurance, Japan’s largest life insurer, has been confirmed to have invested in U.S. space company SpaceX for more than 10 years. As a result, following SpaceX’s recent initial public offering (IPO), Nippon Life is expected to reap investment returns worth hundreds of billions of yen.
According to the Nikkei on Wednesday, Nippon Life invested in a venture capital (VC) fund holding SpaceX shares from an early stage. This marks the first time a Japanese financial institution’s early investment in SpaceX has been disclosed.
Nippon Life is one of Japan’s largest institutional investors, managing insurance premiums received from policyholders. This investment also appears to have been made purely for investment purposes to secure asset management returns.
Japanese financial industry sources estimate the investment returns Nippon Life will secure at 100 billion to 500 billion yen (approximately 940 billion to 4.7 trillion won). However, SpaceX operates a lock-up system that restricts early investors from selling shares for a certain period. Under this system, the venture capital firm can sell its holdings only after about 70 to 135 days have passed since the offering price was set, after which returns are distributed to investors.
Nippon Life is expected to reflect the returns in its earnings as early as the fiscal year ending March 2028. The company’s core profit, which represents earnings from its main business, stood at 1.0655 trillion yen (approximately 10.0963 trillion won) as of March 2026, indicating that the SpaceX investment returns will significantly affect its earnings. The scale of returns could grow further depending on whether SpaceX’s stock price rises.
The Nikkei reported that “SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, faced a crisis threatening its survival in the early days, including the failure of its small Falcon 1 rocket launch, but grew rapidly afterward by building its Starlink satellite internet service and successfully launching a crewed spacecraft,” adding that “Nippon Life has invested in SpaceX since 10 years ago, seeing its potential when the company’s value was far lower than it is now.”
Listed on the U.S. Nasdaq on the 12th, SpaceX recorded a market capitalization of 2.43 trillion dollars (approximately 3,715 trillion won), ranking as the world’s sixth-largest company.