James Murdoch, the cast-out heir to the Fox News dynasty, stands to collect up to $7.5 billion from early investments in Elon Musk's SpaceX — a staggering return that exposes the financial interdependence between the legacy media machine that attacks tech populists and the free-speech platforms those same elites quietly profit from.
The money trail matters because it reveals who actually benefits from the new tech economy while the Murdoch press runs interference for the censorship regime. Ordinary Americans are told by Murdoch-owned outlets that Musk and his platforms are dangerous. Meanwhile, the Murdoch family fortune is riding on Musk's success.
According to Fortune, details of James Murdoch's holdings emerged from a 2023 court case brought by a Tesla shareholder challenging Musk's $56 billion compensation package. Court filings revealed James bought three separate tranches of SpaceX stock: two worth $50 million each, acquired in 2019 and 2020 through a private investment firm believed to be his Lupa Systems, and another $20 million as a personal investment in 2019. Those combined stakes are now estimated at between $6.57 billion and $7.44 billion, according to Pitchbook data cited by Fortune. That is a return of roughly 6,000 percent.
James Murdoch has deep personal ties to Musk. The two first met in the late nineties, when Musk was building Zip2 and James was running digital operations at News Corp. They reconnected after James ordered a Tesla Roadster in the mid-2000s and went on family vacations together to Israel, Mexico, and the Bahamas, according to the court filings.
The windfall comes as SpaceX stock has taken a beating. Benzinga reports that Musk's net worth has plunged more than $407 billion from its record high of $1.32 trillion, down to $913 billion, largely driven by SpaceX's post-IPO decline from a June 16 high of $225 to $145. Still, analysts remain bullish — Deutsche Bank has a target of $255, Macquarie $250, and Raymond James an eye-popping $800.
The Murdoch family dynamics add another layer. James was pushed aside when Rupert chose Lachlan to succeed him atop News Corp. The split turned vicious: a Nevada probate court fight over the Murdoch Family Trust ended with James and his sisters Liz and Prue each receiving a $1.1 billion payout — and being forced to shed their stock in News Corp and Fox, according to Fortune. James and his father no longer speak.
Fortune framed the story around James Murdoch's personal estrangement from the family and his investment acumen. What Fortune buried is the structural conflict: the Murdoch media empire, now firmly under Lachlan's control, has a financial interest in the success of the same tech platforms its commentators regularly demonize. Benzinga, meanwhile, treated the SpaceX slide as a pure markets story, ignoring the political and media power dynamics entirely.
There are caveats. James Murdoch could have sold shares along the way, and SpaceX has approved stock splits that dilute holdings. A representative for James had no comment, and Blair Effron, a partner at Centerview Partners who has advised the Murdochs, told Fortune only that he would pass on speaking.
The open question is not whether the Murdochs are entitled to profit from Musk's ventures — they are. It is whether Americans should keep taking lectures on the dangers of big tech from a media dynasty that has parked billions of dollars in those very same companies.
