SpaceX's $100 Billion Insider Share Unlock Arrives. Stock Rises Instead of Crashing

SpaceX stock fell more than 50% from its June 16 peak of $225.64 before Thursday. Then came the day everyone on Wall Street had circled on their calendars: the first lockup expiration, freeing up to 911.5 million insider shares worth roughly $100 billion to $116 billion, depending on which price you use.

The expected crash didn't show up.

Instead, SpaceX shares rose Thursday, up nearly 3% by late morning after gaining more than 5% earlier in the session, according to 247wallst. This was a sharp reversal from Wednesday, when the stock dropped as much as 14-15% following the company's first earnings call as a public company.

Why the lockup mattered so much

SpaceX's IPO structure was unusual. Instead of one fixed lockup period, the company staggered sales eligibility across multiple dates, according to the Motley Fool. Thursday's expiration, tied to the second trading day after Tuesday's earnings release, freed up to 20% of eligible insider shares, roughly 911.5 million shares.

That's more than triple SpaceX's public float before Thursday, which stood below 280.1 million shares, per the Motley Fool. A separate tranche of up to 455.8 million additional shares stays locked because SpaceX stock is trading below its $135 IPO price, according to MarketWatch, as reported by Breitbart News.

On paper, more than doubling the tradable float should crush the price through basic supply and demand. That didn't happen. 247wallst called it an important reminder that markets often price in anticipated events before they occur rather than reacting to them after the fact.

Where the selling pressure actually went

JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth told 247wallst that investors had been positioning for the unlock for weeks, which helps explain why much of the pressure likely already showed up during Wednesday's earnings-driven decline rather than Thursday's unlock itself.

Short interest in SpaceX has swelled to roughly 35% of the available float, according to S3 Partners data cited by Bloomberg and reported by Breitbart. That's an enormous short position for a company this size. When insider selling came in lighter than the market feared, it created conditions for short covering, where traders holding short positions buy shares to close them out, adding upward pressure on the price.

Retail investors bought into Wednesday's drop, and Cathie Wood's ARK Invest added shares during the weakness, according to 247wallst. Combined with restrained insider selling, that demand outweighed the new supply.

Insiders also have real reasons not to dump everything at once. Many hold shares through Rule 10b5-1 trading plans, which schedule sales over time rather than allowing one-time liquidation events. Others with a low cost basis from years of employment can simply afford to wait for a price recovery rather than sell into a beaten-down stock, Business Insider noted.

The human side of the unlock

Breitbart News reported that roughly 4,000 current and former SpaceX employees became millionaires based on their stock holdings, and this is the first real chance many of them have had to convert that paper wealth into cash since December 2025.

Financial advisor Evan Mills, who works with SpaceX employees, told Breitbart that this unlock represents the first genuine opportunity for those employees to turn equity into spendable money. Real estate agents in California's South Bay, near SpaceX's headquarters, are already fielding inquiries from employees in their mid-30s to early 40s hunting for homes in Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, and Palos Verdes Estates, according to Vista Sotheby's partner Gerard Bisignano.

Bisignano compared the potential effect to the housing boom that followed Facebook's 2012 IPO, when home values near the company's headquarters rose 21%.

What's still ahead

Thursday's unlock is only the first of several scheduled milestones. Business Insider noted investors still face additional lockup expiration dates ahead, meaning Thursday's calm reaction doesn't guarantee the same outcome next time, particularly if SpaceX's spending and margin story doesn't improve.

Wall Street's formal read on the stock remains bullish on paper: 30 buy ratings, 7 holds, and just 2 sell ratings, according to Bloomberg data cited by Business Insider, with an average 12-month price