New reporting, originally published by ProPublica and reprinted by other outlets, says that some investors acquired stakes in SpaceX while the company was still private, before its initial public offering. The articles focus on two overseas investors described as previously unreported in public records. One investor is described as having ties to Chinese military contractors. The reporting also says an entity linked to the Qatari royal family took a stake in SpaceX during its private-company period. The outlets describe these purchases as having occurred through private transactions that were not widely disclosed, and they frame the information as coming from newly reviewed documents and records. The articles do not dispute that SpaceX raised capital from a range of investors before going public, but they emphasize that at least some of the identified parties had specific institutional or geopolitical connections that were not previously known publicly. The reporting characterizes the developments as newly surfaced details about who held stakes prior to the IPO, rather than as claims about SpaceX’s operations after becoming a public company.