The UNC System's investment fund just closed out a remarkable year, returning 37.8% in the fiscal year that ended in June and pushing total assets to $17 billion. Roughly half of that growth traces back to a single, patient bet the university made on SpaceX back in 2009 — one that's still paying dividends today.
The fund was worth about $12.5 billion just a year earlier, on June 30, 2025, according to WRAL. UNC's exposure to Elon Musk's rocket and spacecraft company came not from a direct stake but through venture capital firms the university invested in, and as reported by Institutional Investor, that path ran through Peter Thiel's Founders Fund — a holding now representing roughly 10% of the endowment's portfolio. SpaceX went public on June 12, and UNC Management Company president Stefan Strein said the company's shares accounted for about half of the fund's overall growth this year, per WRAL.
A 17-Year Wait Finally Pays Off
UNC made its initial SpaceX-related investment in 2009, and the fund only harvested the enormous gain on that bet 17 years later, WRAL reported. According to Investing.com, the original stake amounted to only a few million dollars. UNC sold about $1 billion of SpaceX shares ahead of the company's IPO and still held more than $1 billion of SpaceX stock as of August, the same outlet reported. The fund isn't done cashing in either — WRAL reports it will continue paying out its SpaceX investment through September 2027.
Strein described the year as remarkable, according to WRAL, and he noted that the fund's structure allows it to lock up capital for a very long time in order to harvest illiquid investments like this one. That patience is central to understanding how a bet made nearly two decades ago could suddenly reshape a single fiscal year's results.
Chapel Hill's Share Swells Past $8 Billion
UNC-Chapel Hill's own slice of the fund grew by $2.1 billion, reaching $8.2 billion, according to the News & Observer. WRAL put the more precise figure at growth from $6.036 billion in June 2025 to $8.2 billion by the end of June 2026, and reported that the Chapel Hill Foundation Investment Fund accounted for nearly half of the entire UNC Investment Fund. That fund distributed $315.1 million for university programs and development, per the same WRAL report.
The fund doesn't just serve Chapel Hill. It manages money for UNC Health, NC State, Appalachian State, UNC Charlotte, UNC Wilmington and other UNC System schools, according to WRAL's reporting. UNC Health held around $4 billion of the fund, NC State had about $1.8 billion, several other system schools held roughly $400 million apiece, others sat in the $250 million range, and a few smaller schools held between $40 million and $80 million, per the same account. Jim Blaine said other UNC System schools benefited from UNC and UNC Health's investments in SpaceX as well, WRAL noted.
How UNC Stacks Up Against Its Peers
UNC's 37.8% return was about double the 18.9% median estimated for endowment funds managing more than $500 million, Investing.com reported. The fund also outperformed its primary benchmark, as well as a portfolio split 70% stocks and 30% bonds, across the one-year, three-year, five-year, seven-year and ten-year time horizons, according to WRAL. Longer term, the portfolio produced annualized returns of 20.1% over three years, 12.5% over five years and 13.5% over ten years, per Investing.com. The News & Observer reported that the fund claims top-10% performance among its peer investment funds with or without SpaceX in the mix, though the exact methodology behind that ranking wasn't detailed.
UNC wasn't alone in cashing in on an early SpaceX wager. The University of Colorado Foundation saw its initial $150,000 SpaceX investment from 2009 grow to nearly 57 times its original value, helping deliver a 20.34% net return for its latest fiscal year, according to Institutional Investor. Washington University in St. Louis invested about $50 million in SpaceX roughly a decade ago, the Financial Post reported, while the University of Michigan's early $20 million bet on OpenAI was worth $2 billion by 2023, per public documents cited by the same outlet.
Not every top performer needed a SpaceX stake to get there. The University of Nebraska Foundation, with no direct SpaceX exposure, returned nearly 23% for the 12-month period ending May 31, and Baylor University posted a 19% return over the same period without holdings in passive equities, SpaceX or Cerebras Systems, both according to Institutional Investor. Analysts quoted by that outlet cautioned against reading too much into any single year's numbers — MPI estimated SpaceX's roughly 280% appreciation could add 8 to 11 percentage points to an institution's annual return depending on exposure size, and Michael Markov noted that such a windfall can heavily sway one year's return without necessarily validating an endowment's broader long-term strategy. The Financial Post made a similar point, noting that a gain like this is recognized in a single year even though it was built up over many.
