BENGALURU, June 26 -- Indian family offices and wealthy investors are widening their bets on private US frontier-tech and artificial intelligence (AI) companies after the SpaceX initial public offering (IPO) gave them a clearer sense of the scale of returns and the size of the market.

These investors bet privately on SpaceX through wealth managers and structured deals, using special purpose vehicles (SPVs) and funds. The paper returns on SpaceX-linked bets range from 20x to 100x, but these gains will remain unrealized until positions are unwound after the lock-in period ends.

Viram Shah, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of Vested Finance, said some Indian investors who entered SpaceX through its platform are doing well on pa...