Why a faith-based investing group says it’s betting on Palantir, but draws the line at SpaceX

SpaceX has been the talk of Wall Street since its historic IPO, with both retail and institutional investors piling in, but there’s one group that won’t be chasing the hype.

Out of bounds for now – that’s how Inspire Investing sees Elon Musk’s ventures in rockets and artificial intelligence. The holdup? Social media ties. A single division drags the whole package down. X, tucked inside SpaceX and linked to xAI, trips red flags. Moral standards aren’t met, says CEO Robert Netzly.

He explained it clearly to Business Insider. One segment taints the rest. Clearance denied

“SpaceX is an impressive company by any financial measure, and I had no doubt the IPO would generate extraordinary excitement,” he said. “But I wonder sometimes whether investors have paused to ask what they are actually becoming a partial owner of when they buy.”

Out of orbit comes trouble, at least for Netzly. His crew sees no issue with SpaceX launching rockets, none on ethics, nothing financial either. Still, something else tripped the wire. The launch provider slipped past a different kind of checkpoint – the moral one. That gate stands first in their investing path.

What brought it down? Not rocket science. It was what lives inside X, the platform. The stuff people post there crossed a line. Content became the dealbreaker.

Out of step with safety standards, the firm drew sharp words from its leader. A paper by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation flagged X for spreading graphic material online.

Instead of fixing problems, choices kept piling up risks. With little change seen, blame landed squarely on repeated lapses. Though warned before, movement toward reform stayed absent.

“You can’t buy SpaceX without profiting from those activities. As exciting as SpaceX might be as a rocket company, we have to ask deeper questions.”

A reply from SpaceX never came after asking them to share their thoughts.

Later on, Netzly mentioned Inspire isn’t planning to invest in Tesla shares anytime soon – though their reasoning stands apart. The decision ties back to how the automaker supports staff seeking reproductive healthcare across state lines, a policy falling short of the fund’s criteria.

Still, Inspire doesn’t find anything wrong with investing in military-linked shares. Netzly points to Palantir as one it favors. That firm builds smart data tools driven by artificial intelligence. It’s landed big jobs working for the Pentagon. Immigration enforcement work also comes its way through agreements with ICE.

Still, Netzly isn’t fazed – Inspire’s attention lands elsewhere in the business. Yet that detail sticks out less than expected.
“Palantir is a technology company,” he said. “There is risk with a business like Palantir, for their surveillance technology, and for the work that they do to be misused, greatly misused.

A business like that needs to be paid special attention to, but similar to a firearms manufacturer, we don’t hold the manufacturer guilty for customers who may misuse that firearm.”

So far, they’re still invested – yet watching closely. He mentioned Inspire keeps track of Palantir, just in case things cross a line.

The activity deemed questionable hasn’t shown up yet.

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Original Article Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/faith-based-investing-palantir-spacex-elon-musk-pltr-spcx-inspire-2026-6