On Aug. 6, more than 911 million SpaceX shares came out of their first lockup, roughly doubling the number of shares available to trade in a single session. By every historical precedent, that should have been a heavy selling day. Instead, the stock rose about 6%. Two weeks later, the episode looks less like a supply flood and more like a test the company passed.
The unlock landed two days after SpaceX’s first earnings report as a public company, and the timing has since been credited with defusing what investors had circled on their calendars as the plunge. The stock had drifted toward record lows into the unlock, with short sellers piling in ahead of the supply they assumed was coming. When the flood did not arrive, some of those shorts covered their positions, and the shares climbed.
The rebound gathered force through the week. SpaceX announced an $8.1 billion contract with the Pentagon, and its first earnings report came in ahead of expectations, with revenue growth that analysts said supported the company’s target of $100 billion in annualized revenue. On Aug. 12, the stock rose 12% in a single session. Equiti, a trading platform, put the cumulative gain from the post-unlock low at about 35%, adding roughly $500 billion to the company’s market value in a matter of days.
The structure of the lockup explains part of what happened. The Aug. 6 release was the first of several staggered tranches: the bulk of the company’s shares free up over the following year, with further releases in November and December that dwarf August’s. Chief executive Elon Musk’s own stake, roughly 6.4 billion shares, stays locked until the middle of 2027. The people who could sell had spent the weeks before the unlock doing so, analysts noted, and the buyers who met them were long-term holders who had been waiting for the supply to clear.
The numbers tell part of the story. Roughly 4% to 5% of SpaceX’s shares traded freely at the time of the June IPO; after the August release, the figure was closer to 12%. More releases follow, and by the end of the staggered schedule the tradable float could approach 40% of the company. Each tranche will test whether the buyers who absorbed the first wave are willing to absorb the rest.
The same week, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite-internet service went on sale in Vietnam, with monthly plans starting at $43. Vietnam became the sixth market in Southeast Asia for the service, and its approval came after years of regulatory negotiations in a country that had previously kept foreign satellite services at arm’s length. Analysts said the launch matters beyond the immediate subscriber base: Vietnam is one of the region’s fastest-growing internet markets, and a foothold there gives Starlink access to a customer pool of more than 100 million people.
The Vietnam launch required patience. Starlink’s entry followed years of discussions with regulators who had insisted on local control over satellite services, and the company agreed to operate within a framework that satisfied the government’s data and ownership requirements. People familiar with the talks said the service will begin with a limited rollout, prioritizing rural and underserved areas where terrestrial internet is thin, before expanding to cities.
The Pentagon contract is the other pillar of the company’s de-risking story. Defense revenue provides a floor of demand that is less cyclical than consumer launches or commercial satellite sales, and government customers tend to sign longer contracts. The $8.1 billion award, announced within days of the lockup, gave investors a reason to look through the supply overhang toward the company’s order book.
The market reaction to the lockup also says something broader about the appetite for IPO supply. For months, dealmakers had warned that the wave of AI and space listings would test whether public markets could absorb the volume of shares set to unlock. SpaceX’s experience suggests that when a company delivers earnings and contracts, investors will take the supply. The test for the other companies in the pipeline is whether they can match the narrative.
SpaceX still faces the same questions it faced before the unlock. The company’s valuation, among the highest of any company in the world, rests on projections of Starship’s future and on a satellite business that is spending heavily to expand. The staggered unlocks mean more supply is coming, and Musk’s eventual unlock in 2027 looms over the stock. But the first test, the one everyone had been dreading, has passed.
The pattern of patient, staggered selling that analysts saw in August may hold for the tranches ahead. Employees and early backers who have waited years for liquidity have shown they are not dumping into the market; the culture of restrained selling that built up during SpaceX’s private days appears to have carried over. Whether that discipline survives as the unlock schedule grows will determine whether the company’s next tests go as smoothly as the first.
The episode has also recalibrated expectations for the IPO market. Dealmakers had worried that the SpaceX unlock would coincide with a wave of other supply and that a disorderly decline would chill the pipeline of private companies waiting to list. Instead, the shares absorbed the supply and rallied, and bankers said the outcome has made prospective issuers more confident about their own lockups. Whether that confidence holds through the larger unlocks still ahead is the open question.
