Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, has almost doubled her bet on the US stock market, with her portfolio of shares there now worth an eye-watering $US5.7 billion ($8 billion).
Filings to the US Securities Commission overnight reveal that Rinehart’s ownership of US shares increased from $US3.3 billion at the end of March to $US5.7 billion at the end of June.
The massive jump in the value of her portfolio was driven in part by the $US1.4 billion value of her investment in technology billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Rinehart spent $US1 billion buying shares in the sought-after float on Nasdaq in June, equating to about 7.4 million SpaceX shares. The mining magnate’s friendship with Musk has evolved via their mutual support of Donald Trump during the 2024 US presidential election. Rinehart has described Musk as a “truly exceptional person”.
It has not, however, been one of Rinehart’s better investments, as SpaceX was floated at $US135 a share, peaked at $US201.80 in the days following the listing, but has traded as low as $US108 a share in recent weeks. It ended trading on Friday at $US140 a share.
The filing reveals that Rinehart also bought almost 600,000 SpaceX shares after the float, to take her stake to 8 million shares. The SpaceX float briefly made Musk the world’s first trillionaire. Rinehart’s stake in the rocket, artificial intelligence and satellite company is the single largest investment outside iron ore made by her private company Hancock Prospecting.
Rinehart topped the 2026 Financial Review Rich List, with an estimated wealth of $39 billion.
Her bet on Musk does not end with SpaceX. The latest disclosures reveal she retains almost 21,000 shares in Musk’s electric carmaker, Tesla. Rinehart’s stake there is worth just under $US9 million, and the market is now mooting that Musk’s next strategic move will be to merge SpaceX and Tesla into one company.
The quarterly filing to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission reveals Rinehart has also boosted her support for Trump, doubling her investment in the listed Trump Media and Technology, which owns the president’s Truth Social platform.
Rinehart now has 870,000 shares in the company, compared with 430,000 at the end of March, and her stake is now worth $US6.7 million.
Along with her relationship with Musk and support for Trump, closer to home, Rinehart has emerged as a major financial backer of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.
In April, Hanson confirmed Rinehart had bought One Nation a light plane to facilitate campaigning. The Queensland senator and the billionaire were recently photographed together poolside at a luxury resort in Sicily on a trip that Rinehart partially funded.
The filings overnight show Rinehart also has stakes in other US-listed tech companies including semiconductor giant Nvidia, the Jeff Bezos-controlled Amazon, Google’s owner Alphabet, and Microsoft. She also has shares in the Murdoch-family controlled Fox Corp, which is chaired by Lachlan Murdoch.
Rinehart has also made a major $US832 million bet on rare earths miner MP Materials and has $US612 million invested in Canadian natural resources company Teck Resources.
Hancock Prospecting was contacted for comment.
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