SpaceX insiders got their first opportunity Thursday to sell stock into the public market, as a lockup agreement restricting insider share sales expired and freed up to 911.5 million shares — worth roughly $101 billion — for potential sale.
Once restrictions lift, the total shares available for trading will climb to as many as 1.55 billion from roughly 639 million, according to Barron’s
But insiders will not be able to sell as much as they might have hoped: a separate tranche of up to 455.8 million shares will remain locked up because SpaceX stock is trading below its $135 IPO price, according to MarketWatch. SpaceX stock closed at $108.27 on Wednesday. Thursday’s expiration is the first real opportunity for employees and early investors to turn their holdings into cash since December 2025, according to MarketWatch. “This is the first real opportunity to turn paper wealth into real, hard cash that they can actually spend,” financial advisor Evan Mills, who works with current and former SpaceX employees, said.
The lockup expiration arrives as SpaceX stock sits under pressure. Shares dropped more than 10% on Wednesday after the company’s first-ever public earnings call disappointed investors, even as revenue came in at $7.8 billion for the quarter. The stock has fallen more than 50% from its June 16 peak of $225.64, and short sellers have targeted it aggressively — S3 Partners data show that 35% of the available float is currently being sold short, according to Bloomberg. “We’ve never seen anything like it, we’ve never seen anything of this scale, we’ve never seen a lock-up being phased in this way,” Peter Singlehurst, head of the private companies team at Baillie Gifford, said. “We’re in uncharted waters.” SpaceX structured its lockup with a staggered nine-stage release schedule rather than the traditional single 180-day expiration, a design intended to reduce the risk of a sudden flood of selling.