Luke Nosek

Luke Nosek is a venture capitalist who co-founded PayPal and, with Peter Thiel and Ken Howery, Founders Fund. He has sat on the board of SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.) since July 2008 and has been managing partner of Gigafund, a venture firm he co-founded in July 2017, since its inception. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer engineering (1996) from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and was 50 years old in June 2026.¹ The university's Grainger College of Engineering gave him its Young Alumni Achievement Award in 2011.²

PayPal

Nosek co-founded PayPal and served as its vice president of business development, vice president of marketing and vice president of strategy from November 1998 to February 2002.¹ He oversaw PayPal's marketing at launch and created its "Instant Transfer" product.² A Federal Election Commission record dated September 30, 1999 lists a 250 dollar contribution from "Nosek, Luke" of Palo Alto to Bush for President Inc., with his employer given as Confinity.³

Founders Fund

SpaceX's 2026 prospectus dates his co-founding of Founders Fund to April 2006 and his service as a general partner through July 2017.¹ The University of Illinois award citation of 2011 gives 2005 as the year he helped found the firm, calls him a managing partner, and credits him as "the initial architect of the 'founder friendly' strategy" and the builder of the firm's biotechnology practice.² Federal Election Commission records give his employer as Founders Fund, with his title variously as managing partner, managing member, partner and general partner, from June 2009 to October 2015.⁴

The Securities and Exchange Commission's Form D filings for Founders Fund vehicles name him with Thiel and Howery. On May 15, 2009, Founders Fund SpaceX Fund, LP reported 3,481,500 dollars sold to 11 investors since a first sale on April 30, 2009, at One Letterman Drive, Building C, Suite 420, San Francisco, and listed Nosek, Thiel, Howery and Sean Parker as its directors. An amendment filed August 17, 2009 reported 6,737,500 dollars sold to 29 investors.⁵ The same suite is the address given for Thiel on the 2008 and 2009 returns of the Thiel Foundation.

Founders Fund III, LP (filed May 5, 2010) reported 107,272,727 dollars sold to 21 investors and named The Founders Fund III Management, LLC, Thiel, Howery, Nosek and Parker as promoters. Founders Fund IV, LP (filed December 1, 2011) reported 500,000,000 dollars sold to 58 investors and named Thiel, Howery, Nosek, Bruce Gibney and Brian Singerman as promoters. Founders Fund V, LP (filed March 6, 2014, 1,015,200,000 dollars from 109 investors) and Founders Fund VI, LP (filed March 25, 2016, 1,274,127,000 dollars from 197 investors) listed Thiel, Howery, Nosek and Singerman as directors, at One Letterman Drive, Building D, Suite 500.⁶⁷⁸

Airbnb and the Founders Fund II and III Vehicles

A Form 3 filed for Airbnb with a date of event of December 9, 2020 names Founders Fund II Management, LLC, Founders Fund IV Management, LLC, Thiel, Nosek and Singerman as reporting persons, each checked as a ten percent owner. Its footnotes state that Thiel and Nosek "have shared voting and investment power over the shares held by" six partnerships: The Founders Fund II, LP, its Entrepreneurs Fund and Principals Fund, and The Founders Fund III, LP, its Entrepreneurs Fund and Principals Fund. Thiel and Singerman are given the same power over the Founders Fund IV partnerships. A Form 4 filed December 14, 2020 reports the automatic conversion of the Series B and Series C preferred stock into Class B common stock on the closing of Airbnb's initial public offering, with the same statements of shared voting power.⁹¹⁰ SpaceX's 2026 prospectus places the end of his general partner role at Founders Fund in July 2017.¹

SpaceX

Nosek has served on the SpaceX board since July 2008. For the company's initial public offering of June 2026 he was listed with Elon Musk, Gwynne Shotwell, Antonio J. Gracias and Donald Harrison as the five directors expected to serve as the initial Class B Directors, the seats elected by holders of Class B stock. Ira Ehrenpreis, Randy Glein and Steve Jurvetson were named as the initial Common Stock Directors. The board found Nosek independent under the listing standards of Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas, and he was named with Ehrenpreis (chair) and Gracias as an expected member of the compensation and nominating committee, under the controlled-company exemption.¹

The prospectus's beneficial ownership table lists 32,987,360 shares of Class A common stock for Nosek: 24,987,340 shares held of record by him and 8,000,020 shares held of record by Nosek Capital, LLC, of which he is the managing member. Footnote 7 to the table states that "the reported amounts include 2,381,000 shares of Class A common stock pledged as security for personal indebtedness." The initial public offering price was 135.00 dollars per share, at which the holding corresponds to about 4.45 billion dollars.¹ His Form 3 filed June 11, 2026 reports the same two holdings and lists him as a director, with his address in care of the company at Starbase, Texas.¹¹ SpaceX's launch customers include the National Reconnaissance Office, and its Starshield is "a secure satellite network designed specifically for government customers and national security applications."¹

The Form 13F holdings report of Gigafund Management Company, LLC for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 lists 171,826,745 shares of SpaceX Class A common stock valued at 29,358,317,651 dollars, and 19,459,882 shares of Angel Studios Class A common stock valued at 71,417,767 dollars.¹² A Federal Election Commission record of March 29, 2012 gives Nosek's employer as "Space X" and his occupation as board director.⁴

SpaceX's own Form D filings list Nosek as a director in all 21 Form D and Form D/A filings on the company's EDGAR record, from March 31, 2009 to August 5, 2022. The other related persons named include Musk, Shotwell and Jurvetson in every filing, Kimbal Musk through December 2021, Gracias from November 2010, and Harrison from August 2017. The filing of March 31, 2009 reports 15,025,000 dollars sold to seven investors of a 60,000,000 dollar offering (first sale March 18, 2009), six weeks before the first sale by Founders Fund SpaceX Fund. Later filings report 50,199,998 dollars to 16 investors (November 2010), 999,999,925 dollars to 13 investors (January 2015), 449,999,820 dollars to 25 investors (as amended November 27, 2017), 1,901,446,920 dollars to 75 investors (August 2020), 1,164,061,924 dollars to 99 investors (as amended April 14, 2021) and 1,724,965,480 dollars to 74 investors (as amended June 30, 2022).⁵¹³

Gigafund

Nosek co-founded Gigafund in July 2017 and has been managing partner since inception.¹ The first two Gigafund Form D filings, for Gigafund 0, LP and Gigafund 0-A, LP, were filed July 27, 2017 from Redwood City, California, each with a 100,000,000 dollar offering and no sales reported. Nosek and Stephen Oskoui are the executive officers on both, and on every one of the 29 Form D and Form D/A filings made by 23 Gigafund partnerships through June 2024. From 2019 the filings give an address in Austin, Texas.¹⁴

The filings report Gigafund 0.1, LP (73,811,900 dollars, amendment of May 11, 2018), Gigafund 0.2, LP (50,999,975 dollars from four investors, first sale April 25, 2018), Gigafund 0.6, LP (71,814,396 dollars, July 2020), Gigafund 0.8, LP (230,939,181 dollars from 31 investors, November 2020), Gigafund 0.12, LP (80,000,000 dollars from 19 investors, February 2021), Gigafund 0.14, LP (478,358,022 dollars of a 513,000,000 dollar offering from 43 investors, first sale June 23, 2021), Gigafund 0.15, LP (49,999,600 dollars), Gigafund 0.16, LP (74,999,680 dollars), Gigafund 0.19, LP (53,936,666 dollars) and Gigafund 0.25, LP (71,500,000 dollars of a 100,000,000 dollar offering from 14 investors, first sale April 17, 2024). Smaller vehicles (0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.7, 0.9, 0.13 and 0.24) raised between 2,000,000 and 16,999,998 dollars each, and Gigafund 0.22 (2023) and 0.26, 0.27 and 0.28 (June 28, 2024) reported no sales. The forms do not name portfolio companies.¹⁴

A Form 3 filed September 19, 2025 for Angel Studios, Inc. of Provo, Utah (date of event September 10, 2025) names Gigafund 1, LP, Gigafund 1 GP, LP, Nosek and Oskoui as reporting persons, each a ten percent owner. It reports 19,459,882 shares of Class A common stock held directly by Gigafund 1, LP, and states that "Stephen D. Oskoui and Luke Nosek control all voting and investments decisions" over the partnership's securities. The reporting persons' address is 555 East 5th Street, Suite 3127, Austin.¹⁵ The Schedule 13G filed September 17, 2025 gives the stake as 19.48 percent of the Class A shares outstanding.¹⁶

Halcyon Molecular and Other Boards

Nosek joined Halcyon Molecular, "a Founders Fund portfolio company pursuing a novel approach to ultra-fast complete genome sequencing", as president in 2009, and was its chairman in 2011, when he also sat on the boards of Pathway Genomics and SpaceX.² Federal Election Commission records of March 29, 2012 give his employer as "Halcyon Molecular/Chairman" on two contributions to Friends of Mark Warner.⁴ He sits on the boards of Last Energy (small modular nuclear reactors), Emerald Cloud Lab (remotely accessible, largely autonomous life science laboratories) and ResearchGate, and served on the board of DeepMind before its acquisition by Google.¹

Political Contributions

Federal Election Commission records list the following itemized contributions by Nosek, with the employer and occupation as reported on each filing.⁴

• 1999: 250 dollars to Bush for President Inc. (employer Confinity).
• 2009: 1,000 dollars to Friends of Jane Harman on June 19, with an offsetting entry of minus 1,000 dollars on July 1 (Founders Fund, managing partner).
• 2011: 1,000 dollars on September 10 to the Committee to Re-elect Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (Founders Fund, managing member).
• 2012: 9,000 dollars on January 3 and 1,001 dollars on January 23 to Endorse Liberty, Inc. (Founders Fund, partner); 5,000 dollars to the National Republican Congressional Committee on March 28; two entries of 2,500 dollars each to Janice Hahn for Congress (Space X, board director) and to Friends of Mark Warner (Halcyon Molecular, chairman) on March 29; 2,000 dollars each to the Committee to Re-elect Loretta Sanchez (August 27), Fattah for Congress (August 28) and Palazzo for Congress (September 11).
• 2013: 5,000 dollars to Team Graham, Inc. on March 8, partly redesignated, and two entries of 2,600 dollars to Udall for Colorado on March 26.
• 2015: 5,400 dollars to Friends of John McCain, split between primary and general, and 5,000 dollars to Country First Political Action Committee on October 14 (Founders Fund, general partner, Mill Valley, California).
• 2021: 250 dollars to Georgians for Latham through WinRed on May 17 and 750 dollars on May 19 (employer given as "Gigi Fund", managing partner, Austin); 2,900 dollars to Lisa Murkowski for US Senate through WinRed on October 7 (Gigafund, co-founder, West Lake Hills, Texas).
• 2022: two entries of 2,900 dollars to Blake Masters for Senate on March 28 (Gigafund, managing partner).
• 2024: 500,000 dollars to Turnout for America on November 4 (self-employed, entrepreneur).
• 2025: 10,000 dollars to Protect Freedom Political Action Committee on November 6.
• 2026: 5,000 dollars to the Sheehy Victory Committee on February 15 (Gigafund Management Company, venture capital); 44,300 dollars and 55,700 dollars to the Republican National Committee on March 23, the second to its legal proceedings account (Gigafund Management, partner).

Endorse Liberty, Inc. (committee C00508002) is registered as an independent-expenditure-only committee of Alexandria, Virginia, first filed December 20, 2011, with Abraham David Niederhauser as treasurer; it reported 3,937,582.81 dollars in receipts and 3,542,481.59 dollars in independent expenditures for the 2012 cycle.¹⁷

Turnout for America (committee C00883520) is registered as an independent-expenditure-only committee of Alexandria, Virginia, with Janna Rutland as treasurer, and first filed on July 17, 2024. For the 2023 to 2024 cycle it reported 45,670,092.93 dollars in receipts and 34,537,933.83 dollars in disbursements.¹⁸ Its largest itemized individual contributions were 5,000,000 dollars from Diane Hendricks on each of August 23 and October 4, 2024, 5,000,000 dollars (September 5) and 2,500,000 dollars (October 22) from Kelcy Warren of Energy Transfer Partners, 2,000,000 dollars from D. Andrew Beal of Beal Bank, and 1,979,048.38 dollars from Howard Lutnick of Cantor Fitzgerald on October 22, 2024; Roger Penske and Jeffrey Sprecher of Intercontinental Exchange each gave 1,000,000 dollars. Its largest payee was Patriot Grassroots of Cheyenne, Wyoming, which received 26,064,474.55 dollars in twelve payments, the largest of them 4,719,600 dollars on October 22, 2024, each described as "canvassing". It also paid 1,950,000 dollars to American Majority Action and 200,000 dollars to the CatholicVote.org Candidate Fund.¹⁹