SpaceX
Antonio is the Founder, Managing Partner, and Chief Investment Officer of Valor. Antonio founded Valor in 2001. He has over twenty years of experience in private equity investing. Antonio currently serves as Lead Independent Director at Tesla Motors and is a director of several Valor portfolio companies, including Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), Marathon Pharmaceuticals, Solar City, and Porch.com.
Antonio is actively involved in philanthropic activities. He is a trustee of The Aspen Institute, a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago, a member of the board of directors of World Business Chicago, a member of the board of visitors of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and a member of the board of visitors of the University of Chicago Law School. Additionally, he is a past member of the board of directors of The Economic Club of Chicago, a past member of the board of directors of Clean Energy Trust, and a past trustee of the Field Museum.
In 2008, Antonio received the Immigrant & Refugee Contributions Award for Entrepreneurial & Business Leadership from Changing Worlds, an educational arts non-profit organization. He is a 2009 Henry Crown Fellow, an Aspen Institute program designed to engage the next generation of leaders in the challenge of community spirited leadership. In 2015, Antonio was appointed to the Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship (PAGE) Program, chaired by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker. The program is a first-of-kind collaboration among the White House, entrepreneurs, the Department of Commerce, the Department of State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) partners.
Prior to founding Valor, Antonio was the Founder and Managing Member of MG Capital where he acquired and acted as CEO for a number of manufacturing and technology related companies. At MG Capital, together with the team that is still together at Valor today, he developed the operational skills that Valor uses to help its portfolio companies achieve scale and enhance their value. Prior to MG Capital he was at Goldman, Sachs & Co.
Antonio holds a joint B.S. and M.S.F.S. (honors degree) in International Finance and Economics from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He also studied corporate structures and economic development at Waseda University in Tokyo. Prior to completing his Masters, Antonio returned to Japan as a Nikko Securities Fellow. Antonio holds a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. Antonio is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.
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SpaceX
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SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches the world’s most advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk to revolutionize space transportation, with the ultimate goal of making life multiplanetary. SpaceX has gained worldwide attention for a series of historic milestones. It is the only private company ever to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit, which it first accomplished in December 2010. The company made history again in May 2012 when its Dragon spacecraft attached to the International Space Station, exchanged cargo payloads, and returned safely to Earth — a technically challenging feat previously accomplished only by governments. Since then Dragon has delivered cargo to and from the space station multiple times, providing regular cargo resupply missions for NASA. SpaceX believes a fully and rapidly reusable rocket is the pivotal breakthrough needed to substantially reduce the cost of space access. The majority of the launch cost comes from building the rocket, which historically has flown only once. Compare that to a commercial airliner – each new plane costs about the same as Falcon 9 but can fly multiple times per day and conduct tens of thousands of flights over its lifetime. Following the commercial model, a rapidly reusable space launch vehicle could reduce the cost of traveling to space by a hundredfold. While most rockets are designed to burn up on reentry, SpaceX rockets can not only withstand reentry but can also successfully land back on Earth and refly again. SpaceX’s family of Falcon launch vehicles are the first and only orbital class rockets capable of reflight. Depending on the performance required for the mission, Falcon lands on one of our autonomous spaceport droneships out on the ocean or one of our landing zones near our launch pads.