The largest space ETF publishes two SpaceX figures for the same day
Tema's space fund still describes SpaceX as a private company in an FAQ that also says the fund may hold the shares two ways.
Key takeaways
The largest space fund published two SpaceX figures for Oct. 29 that do not agree.
Tema Space Innovators ETF NASA listed Space Exploration Technologies, the company that calls itself SpaceX, at 25.93% of net asset value. An FAQ on the same page, dated that day, put the stake at $173 million.
That is 17.5% of the $988 million the page reports. The gap is 8.4 percentage points.
The shares are already public. SpaceX began trading on June 12, and on Oct. 29 they closed at $143.89.
Tema's SpaceX disclosure
The FAQ still describes a private company.
Tema says the fund holds SpaceX through a special-purpose vehicle, a separate entity set up to hold the shares, and that the stake is valued at transaction cost. The value in the daily holdings file, it says, does not change unless the fund trades. Public securities update every day.
The same answer says SpaceX is not publicly traded.
The listing answer still treats the IPO as a future event. Tema says it is expected mid-year. After that, the FAQ says:
"The fund may also hold public SpaceX shares alongside the private position."
That is the page's line on holding the stock two ways. The answer still expects the IPO. It does not say the 25.93% line is a public holding plus a private one, or that the $173 million is only the private piece.
The $173 million is in the answer about how the stake is valued, which still says SpaceX is not publicly traded. That dollar figure is the Oct. 29 close applied to the shares listed there.
SpaceX and Super Intelligence
The company in both figures is not a rocket company first.
In the quarter ended Sept. 30, Space was its smallest segment, at 12% of revenue. Space is the segment that designs, manufactures and launches rockets. The largest was Super Intelligence.
On Feb. 2, 2026, SpaceX completed its acquisition of xAI, which became a wholly owned subsidiary. The quarterly report describes Super Intelligence, formerly the AI segment, as a platform spanning computing infrastructure, the Grok model, the software tool Cursor and X.
Super Intelligence revenue was $7.56 billion. Connectivity, the satellite broadband network, was $5.25 billion. Space was $1.77 billion.
The total was $14.58 billion. Super Intelligence was more than half of it, and more than Space and Connectivity combined.
Of $19.59 billion in capital spending that quarter, $16.44 billion went to Super Intelligence. Space took $1.61 billion.
That company is what the 25.93% line holds. The other funds are not the same bet.
Four space ETFs, four portfolios
A fund with space in the name can be a concentrated SpaceX position, a satellite-and-broadcasting index, a combined space and deep-sea index, or a fund built for 5G networks that later added space. These four are not substitutes.
Assets are as of Oct. 29. Holdings are as of Oct. 29 for NASA and ROKT, and as of Oct. 30 for UFOX and UFO. The SpaceX figure for NASA is the holdings line, not the $173 million in the FAQ.
How these space ETFs are built
NASA launched on March 30, 2026, is actively managed, and charges 0.75%. By Oct. 29 it had $988 million. Rocket Lab was the second holding, at 9.9%.
UFO is the older rules-based fund. It launched on April 11, 2019, tracks the VettaFi Space Index, holds 67 stocks, and charges the same 0.75%. Net assets were $470 million on Oct. 29. SpaceX was 14.86% on the Oct. 30 holdings page. The next names were Trimble, EchoStar, Viasat, Garmin and Sirius XM, each around 5%.
Procure's rule allows that mix. Companies qualify, it says, if a majority of their revenue comes from industries that include rocket and satellite manufacturing, ground equipment and broadcasting. A revenue screen is not a launch-vehicle screen. SpaceX is still large enough, at 14.86%, to dominate the result.
ROKT tracks the S&P Kensho Final Frontiers Index, which combines the S&P Kensho Space Index with the deep-sea exploration components of the S&P Kensho Drones Index. It holds 37 stocks, had $156 million on Oct. 29, and charges 0.45%. The largest holding was Forum Energy Technologies, an energy company, at 4.82%, followed by Lockheed Martin, Teledyne and RTX. SpaceX does not appear.
UFOX has existed since 2019. Its index tracks U.S.-listed companies that offer hardware, software or services for 5G or 6G networks, and companies instrumental in satellite communications and the space industry. The space category was added on April 30, 2026. The fund took its current name on June 29. Defiance says performance before those dates may not represent the fund as it stands.
It had $839 million on Oct. 29, second among these four, at a 0.30% fee. On the Oct. 30 holdings page the largest position was Apple, at 5.64%. SpaceX was 4.97%. Nvidia was 4.87%.
The lower fee is a different portfolio, not a cheaper version of the same one. A fund led by Apple is not a 0.30% edition of a fund that lists SpaceX at 25.93%.
Performance since SpaceX's first close
One more fund belongs in the returns. The ARK Space & Defense Innovation ETF ARKX had $737 million as of Sept. 30 and charges 0.75%.
Through Oct. 29, the year-to-date price return was 24.6% for ROKT, 16.4% for the Invesco QQQ Trust QQQ and 12.8% for the State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY. UFO returned 7.9%, and ARKX returned 6.9%. Those are price returns, so they leave out dividends.
ROKT's year-to-date lead includes the months before SpaceX was public. Its index also includes deep-sea exploration.
NASA has no year-to-date figure of that kind. It did not exist at the end of 2025. UFOX is not in that list because a year-to-date figure starts in 2025, before space companies were added to its index. Defiance says performance before that change may not represent the fund now.
SpaceX priced the offering at $135. The first close, on June 12, was $160.95. By Oct. 29 the shares were at $143.89, up 6.6% from the offering price and down 10.6% from that first close, after trading as high as $225.64.
From the June 12 close through Oct. 29, again in price terms, SPY rose 3.7% and QQQ fell 0.8%. ARKX fell 8.3%, SpaceX fell 10.6%, and ROKT fell 11.7%. UFOX fell 14.3%, UFO fell 21%, and NASA fell 32%.
NASA fell 32% from SpaceX's first close
The 14.3% for UFOX includes the weeks before the June 29 rename. Space companies were already in the index by June 12.
Rocket Lab, the second holding in NASA at 9.9% on Oct. 29, fell 42% from that same June 12 close.
A holder who wants the SpaceX weight in NASA still has two answers on the page, 25.93% and $173 million.
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