SpaceX Faces Its Sternest Test Yet: A Historic Share Release Collides With AI Spending Jitters
Published on 08/06/2026 at 07:21 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The timing could hardly have been worse. Just one day after SpaceX delivered its first quarterly report as a publicly traded company — a set of numbers that beat expectations on nearly every operational metric — the stock finds itself staring down the largest lock-up expiry in its brief trading history.
Shares closed Wednesday at €93.46, down 14.12%, leaving the equity just 2.66% above its 52-week low, a trough reached only on August 3. The monthly decline now stands at 28.65%, and the stock sits more than 50% below the record high it set in June, shortly after its market debut.
A Blowout Quarter, Overshadowed by an $18.4 Billion Question
On the surface, the fundamentals told a story of momentum. Revenue surged 92% year-over-year to $7.8 billion in the second quarter, comfortably clearing consensus estimates. The net loss narrowed to $541 million from roughly $1 billion in the prior-year period. Starlink, the satellite internet division, emerged as the profit engine: it generated $4.29 billion in revenue with an operating profit of $1.66 billion, while subscriber numbers doubled to 12 million.
What rattled investors wasn't the operating performance — it was the spending trajectory. Capital expenditures hit $18.4 billion in the quarter, roughly six times the year-ago level, with approximately $15.8 billion funneled into AI infrastructure. Management signaled no let-up: CFO Bret Johnsen said the AI investments would pay for themselves in under a year and guided toward similar expenditure levels for the next two quarters, while targeting an annualized revenue run-rate of $100 billion by year-end. CEO Elon Musk, meanwhile, pulled forward his trillion-dollar revenue ambition to 2030, a year earlier than his previous timeline.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SpaceX?
The market's response was telling. AI revenue did triple quarter-over-quarter to $2.6 billion, and an additional $6.7 billion in cloud contracts landed after the quarter closed. But with profitability still distant and the spending spree accelerating, the optics of pouring billions into an unproven AI bet while a wave of insider shares hits the market proved too much for sentiment to absorb.
The Unlock: A Flood of Shares, With More to Come
Thursday marks the expiration of the first lock-up period following June's IPO, releasing 911.5 million insider-held shares — roughly 20% of the insider stake — into the market. The free float will more than double, from approximately 4.85% to nearly 11.76% of the 13.18 billion shares outstanding.
Not all restricted shares are freed, however. An additional 455.8 million remain locked because the stock never reached the $175.50 threshold that would have triggered early release. Musk's own holding — 6.4 billion shares, or 42% of the company — stays locked until June 2027. The next major tranche, 1.3 billion shares, won't become tradable until after third-quarter earnings this fall, and roughly 12.9 billion additional shares are slated for release by mid-2027. Today's event, in other words, is merely the opening wave.
Wall Street Splits on the Math
The analyst community has responded to the convergence of earnings and unlock with sharply divergent views. Piper Sandler cut its price target to $140 and downgraded the stock to Neutral, citing the doubling of the float, a $17 billion upward revision to its 2027 capex estimate, and the risk of cancellable AI cloud contracts. Wells Fargo's Ken Gawrelski trimmed his target from $230 to $215 but held his Buy rating, pointing to elevated capex projections of $296 billion for 2027 — $263 billion of it earmarked for AI. JPMorgan moved the other way, raising its target to $240. Morgan Stanley stands as the most bullish voice at $300, while Oppenheimer, Cantor, Bernstein, BofA and Deutsche Bank cluster between $235 and $250. The consensus sits at "Moderate Buy."
CNBC's Jim Cramer captured the prevailing ambivalence: long-term, SpaceX remains a buy, he said, but near-term caution is warranted given the lock-up expiry.
SpaceX at a turning point? This analysis reveals what investors need to know now.
An SEC Complaint Adds to the Unease
Compounding the pressure, a complaint filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on the same day alleges inconsistencies around pre-IPO share sales. Investor Ram Rupireddy claims more than a hundred other investors are affected, and three former executives of a related investment vehicle pleaded guilty to fraud charges in March. For a market already braced for selling pressure, the regulatory overhang adds another layer of uncertainty.
Whether early backers — Founders Fund, Craft Ventures, Valor Equity, Alphabet among them — choose to realize gains or hold steady will become apparent in the coming sessions. What's clear is that SpaceX has entered a phase where its growth story and its capital appetite are being weighed in real time, and the market is still deciding which one carries more weight.
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