Harvard’s endowment jumps 27% in fiscal 2026, lifted by SpaceX as top holding

JUST IN: Harvard's endowment jumps 27% in fiscal 2026, its strongest return since 2021, with SpaceX now its top holding at a $2.2 billion stake.

Harvard just posted a 27 percent return, and its biggest bet is on Elon Musk.

The endowment grew 27.1 percent in fiscal 2026, its best year since 2021, beating the S&P 500 by nearly five points. The pot now sits at almost 68 billion dollars. And the single largest holding in the whole thing is a 2.2 billion dollar stake in SpaceX. Second place, Taiwan Semiconductor, isn't even close at under 350 million.

Now for the part they're not celebrating in Cambridge. Federal research money fell almost 20 percent after the Trump administration turned off the taps, and the excise tax on Harvard's investment income is jumping from 1.4 percent to 8. The school says that alone will cost roughly 300 million dollars a year.

So the richest university in America just had its best year in half a decade, and Washington is set to take a bigger slice of it than ever.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.