SpaceX Stock Jumps 6.1% as 912 Million Insider Shares Unlock

SpaceX just passed its first serious post-IPO liquidity test, and the market did not react the way many investors feared.

Roughly 912 million shares held by employees and other early owners became eligible to trade Thursday. Instead of buckling under the potential supply, SpaceX stock climbed 6.1% and closed at $114.92.

That does not mean 912 million shares were sold. It means those shares were released from lockup restrictions and could enter the market if their owners chose to sell.

The distinction matters. Lockup expirations can put heavy pressure on a newly public company because insiders finally gain a chance to turn years of paper wealth into real liquidity.

The Associated Press said SpaceX shares had fallen nearly 14% one day before the release as traders braced for the new supply. Thursday’s 6.1% rebound brought the stock to $114.92, still below the $135 IPO price but a striking reversal on the day insiders first gained meaningful freedom to sell.

AP also put the move against SpaceX’s first public quarterly results. The company lost $541 million, or 9 cents per share, during the second quarter while revenue surged to $7.8 billion—more than 90% above the same period last year.

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas called the lockup expiration an opportunity for investors who wanted a lower entry point and maintained a $300 target for the middle of 2027. That optimism comes with an important disclosure: Morgan Stanley was one of the banks that helped take SpaceX public and earned fees from the offering.

The results gave investors plenty to like and plenty to argue about. SpaceX is growing at a blistering pace, but it is also spending enormous sums on Starship, AI infrastructure and new manufacturing capacity.

That tension helped make Thursday more than another volatile trading session. It was the first time the public market had to absorb a large pool of potentially saleable insider stock while judging SpaceX’s ambitions against its current earnings.

Axios calculated that less than 5% of SpaceX’s shares could trade immediately after the IPO. Thursday’s release of roughly 912 million shares increased the amount available for trading by more than 140%.

Trading volume jumped with it. More than 255 million shares changed hands, about four times the average volume of the previous 10 sessions.

Yet the stock rose. Axios noted that investors also appeared to welcome SpaceX’s announcement that it plans to build its huge Terafab chip-manufacturing complex in Texas, a project designed to support Tesla machines and SpaceX’s orbital-compute plans.

No one announcement can explain every trade in a session that large. But Terafab gave buyers a concrete growth story on the exact day the market was preparing for a flood of new supply.

The foundations for an exciting future are being built in Texas. Next up: Terafab → https://t.co/jGg52Zhn5I pic.twitter.com/SNfSXNr2tb

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 6, 2026

Tesla supplied the other half of that industrial argument. The company said its own machines and SpaceX’s compute plans will require more chips than existing and planned global production can provide.

Terafab will be built in Grimes County, Texas

In April, we broke ground on our research fab on the North Campus of Giga Texas – the precursor to Terafab.

Both Tesla & SpaceX will need far more chips than current & future global production can supply.

This is why we're building… pic.twitter.com/je4jKXuQrY

— Tesla (@Tesla) August 6, 2026

The long-term bet is that SpaceX can turn that spending into launch capacity, satellite revenue and AI infrastructure that justify the valuation. Thursday showed buyers were still willing to make that bet even as insiders gained their first major chance to take money off the table.

There is also a human side to the lockup that gets lost in stock charts. SpaceX employees have spent years building rockets, satellites and ground systems while part of their compensation remained tied up in private-company shares.

Going public created a market for that equity. Thursday opened the first large window for people who helped build the company to sell some of what they earned, diversify their finances or simply hold on.

SpaceX said its IPO closed June 15 after the company issued 638,888,888 Class A shares, including the underwriters’ full overallotment option. The offering raised approximately $85.7 billion in gross proceeds, and trading began June 12 under the ticker SPCX.

That was a record-setting entrance, but the early price action has been brutal. Even after Thursday’s bounce, SpaceX remained about 15% below its $135 offering price and 49% below the June 16 intraday high of $225.64.

The first unlock therefore arrived at a delicate moment. Employees gained liquidity, public investors gained access to a much larger supply of shares, and SpaceX had to prove that demand could show up without the artificially tiny float that supported its debut.

It did—for one day.

Another tranche is expected to become eligible on August 20, followed by additional releases over the next year. Each one will test the balance between insiders who want liquidity and investors willing to fund Musk’s increasingly expensive vision.

Thursday did not settle that long-term argument. It did show that SpaceX could open the gates to hundreds of millions of newly eligible shares, absorb a huge jump in trading, and still finish the day higher.

For the first major unlock, that is about as strong a landing as SpaceX could have asked for.