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Investor Chamath Palihapitiya cashes out of personal Virgin Galactic stake

March 05, 2021 at 01:44 pm EST

(Reuters) - Venture investor Chamath Palihapitiya this week sold his remaining personal stake in Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc, a space tourism company he helped take public in 2019, for around $213 million, regulatory filings showed.

Palihapitiya sold 6.2 million shares, leaving him with about 15.8 million shares in Virgin Galactic, where he remains chairman. The remaining 6.6% stake in the company is through an investment firm that is in partnership with British investor Ian Osborne.

In an emailed statement through a spokesman, Palihapitiya said he would redirect the funds from the share sale toward a "large investment" focused on the fight against climate change.

"The details of this investment will be made public in the next few months. I continue to be a significant investor in Virgin Galactic through Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings and I remain as dedicated as ever to Virgin Galactic's team, mission and prospects," Palihapitiya said in the statement.

Shares of Virgin Galactic were down around 12% at 1:18 p.m. eastern time on Friday, having fallen as much as 20.8% in the day.

Palihapitiya had said in a Twitter post https://bit.ly/3qhkZyp on Dec. 16 that he had sold 3.8 million Virgin Galactic shares to manage his liquidity.

Representatives for Virgin Galactic did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the share sale.

Palihapitiya's special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merged with Virgin Galactic in 2019 allowing the space tourism company to go public with a $2.3 billion market capitalization, without itself launching an IPO.

He has been one of the most prolific sponsors of SPACs, merging them with a range of companies including home-selling platform Opendoor Technologies Inc.

(Reporting by Sohini Podder in Bengaluru, Jessica DiNapli and Joshua Franklin; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Steve Orlofsky)

Chamath Palihapitiya

Mr. Chamath Palihapitiya is a Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. IV, a Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. VI, a Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. V, a Chairman at Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc., a Founder and Chief Executive Officer at The Social+Capital Partnership LLC, a Chief Executive Officer & Managing Partner at Social Capital Holdings, Inc., a Chairman at Ezetap Mobile Solutions Pvt Ltd. and a Chairman at LotusFlare, Inc. He is on the Board of Directors at Captricity, Inc., Remind101, Inc., MAD Apparel, Inc., Confer Health, Inc., Premise Data Corp., Social Capital Public Equity Partners Offshore Fund Ltd. and Golden State Warriors LLC. Mr. Palihapitiya was previously employed as a Chairman & Chief Executive Officer by Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. III, a Chairman & Chief Executive Officer by Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. II, a Chairman & Chief Executive Officer by Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp., a Chief Executive Officer by Social Capital Pep Management LLC, an Independent Director by Slack Technologies, Inc., a Co-Founder by Remote Health Services Corp., a Vice President-Growth, Mobile & International by Facebook, Inc., a Vice President-Business Operations by Historic AOL LLC, a Principal by Mayfield Fund LLC, a Principal by Spinners, Inc., and a Principal by Time Warner Cable, Inc. He also served on the board at Glooko, Inc., 47 Center, Inc., BitYota, Inc., CipherGraph Networks, Inc., Consorte Media, Inc., Fixya, Inc., Groq, Inc., Lemon, Inc., Playdom, Inc. and Syapse, Inc. He received his undergraduate degree from The University of Waterloo.

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The Social+Capital Partnership LLC The Social+Capital Partnership LLC Investment ManagersFinance The Social+Capital Partnership LLC (Social Capital) is a venture capital firm founded in 2011 by Chamath PalihapitIya, Ted Maidenberg and Mamoon Hamid. The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.	Chief Executive Officer
MAD Apparel, Inc. MAD Apparel, Inc. Tools & HardwareConsumer Durables MAD Apparel, Inc. manufactures athletic apparel for men and women. It provides shirts, shorts, leggings and capris. The firm also offers The Core, which snaps directly onto Athos apparel to collect and analyze data from the garment’s sensors, and delivers that data to mobile app via Bluetooth; and iOS only app. The company was founded by Dhananja Pradhan Jayalath and Christopher Wiebe on October 11, 2012 and is headquartered in Redwood City, CA.	Founder

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