SpaceX Funding Round Gets Backing From Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia Investors

SpaceX's planned multi-billion-dollar funding round has reportedly drawn the interests of a Saudi Arabian investment fund and a private firm based in Abu Dhabi.

The funding round is currently being organized by financial services company Morgan Stanley, and is expected to raise the value of the Elon Musk-led spacecraft engineering firm to about $140 billion.

Saudi Arabia's Water and Electricity Holding Company, Badeel--a subsidiary of the country's sovereign Public Investment Fund (PIF)--and Abu Dhabi-based business conglomerate Alpha Dhabi Holding would be part of the funding round, SpaceX and Morgan Stanley representatives informed investors this week, Reuters reported.

Saudi Arabia's investment in the SpaceX funding round is of particular interest due to the previous skirmish between Musk and the country's head of PIF, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, during Tesla's "funding secured" fiasco.

Earlier this year, resurfaced text messages between the SpaceX and Tesla owner and Al-Rumayyan showed that Musk was displeased with how the PIF head had "backpedaled" on their alleged commitment to back his buyout plan of Tesla in 2018.

In their conversation, a reportedly angry Musk discussed with Al-Rumayyan a Bloomberg article, which claimed that the PIF was in talks to take Tesla private. The text messages revealed that Musk was upset because he thought he had already reached a handshake agreement with the PIF head, weeks before their conversation in July 2018 for the fund to finance the transaction.

"This is an extremely weak statement and does not reflect the conversation we had at Tesla," Musk told Al-Rumayyan in his text.

"You said you were definitely interested in taking Tesla private and had wanted to do it since 2016," he added, telling Al-Rumayyan that he was throwing him "under the bus."

In response, the PIF head told Musk "it takes two to tango" and that the agency had not received anything yet from Musk. "We cannot approve anything we do not have sufficient information on," he wrote.

SpaceX made headlines last week after the company managed to ace two orbital missions on March 17. The show began when SpaceX launched 52 of its Starlink internet satellites to orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California before launching a Falcon 9 carrying the SES-18 and SES-19 telecommunications satellites from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

PIF, Alpha Dhabi and SpaceX have not responded to the International Business Times' request for a comment about the funding round.