Analysis
Restrictions preventing early SpaceX shareholders from selling as many as 911.5 million shares lifted on August 6, freeing up to $116 billion worth of stock in one of the largest share unlocks in capital markets history, according to CNBC and Fool.com. The unlock roughly doubles SpaceX's public float, from about 639 million shares to roughly 1.55 billion.
SpaceX debuted on Nasdaq in June, with shares initially jumping to $150 before surging past $225 within days. It's been a rockier eight weeks since: shares closed Wednesday, two days after SpaceX's first quarterly earnings report as a public company, at $108.27 -- less than half the post-IPO peak. This is only the first of several scheduled unlocks: roughly 319 million more shares become eligible on August 20, followed by close to 700 million each in September and October. A separate, longer lockup covering Elon Musk and select other shareholders runs until June 2027.
“SpaceX debuted on Nasdaq in June, with shares initially jumping to $150 before surging past $225 within days.”
The test isn't whether some early investors sell -- some always do at a lockup expiration -- it's whether the stock can absorb four consecutive months of expanding float without breaking meaningfully lower, at a moment when the shares are already trading well off their post-IPO high and broader AI-adjacent names have been selling off. Pulse has previously covered SpaceX's run-up to and aftermath of its Nasdaq debut, and this unlock is the first hard test of whether that IPO pricing holds once early holders can actually sell.
