Harvard's bet on SpaceX helped its endowment grow faster than the S&P 500

Harvard's investment in Elon Musk's SpaceX has paid off.

Matt Rourke/AP Harvard's endowment returned a five-year high of 27.1% in the 12 months to June 30, besting the S&P 500.

The Ivy League college counted a $2.2 billion SpaceX stake as its top Q2 portfolio holding by far.

Harvard's endowment grew to almost $68 billion after accounting for taxes, gifts, and distributions.

Harvard University delivered its best investment return in five years as its bet on SpaceX boosted its stock portfolio.

The elite college's endowment returned 27.1% in the fiscal year ended June 30, its annual financial report revealed on Thursday.

That comfortably outpaced the benchmark S&P 500's 22.3% total return over the same period.

After accounting for taxes, distributions, and gifts , Harvard's endowment grew by $11 billion to nearly $68 billion.

Harvard Management Company's stake in Elon Musk's maker of Starship rockets, Starlink satellites , and AI chatbot Grok was worth $2.2 billion at the end of June, per its second-quarter portfolio disclosure.

SpaceX was its number-one holding, more than six times more valuable than its second-biggest position, a sub-$350 million stake in Taiwan Semiconductor.

Its next-largest positions — each worth over $150 million — were Cerebras, Amazon, Alphabet, and Nvidia.

Its 19 holdings at the end of June were together worth about $4.3 billion, more than double the portfolio's $1.8 billion value three months earlier.

Harvard said the strong performance of its endowment, which is nearly 400 years old and comprises about 15,000 individual funds, helped it weather the " abrupt termination of federal research grants" by the Trump administration.

It's worth noting that 13-F portfolio disclosures are a snapshot of a fund's US stock holdings on a certain date.