SpaceX debuted on the Nasdaq on June 12 under the ticker SPCX. It priced at $135, opened at $150, and closed its first day at $160.95. Five days later it’s trading around $202, roughly a 50% move which pushed the market cap to roughly $2.65 trillion, just past Amazon. It was the largest IPO in history. The $75 billion raise was more than two times oversubscribed, and even the 30% retail allocation was fully exhausted before pricing closed.
A friend of mine recently described buying SpaceX as like buying stock in the Mayflower. You’re investing in the vessel that opens up an entirely new frontier. We like the analogy. It captures the ambitious nature of the space economy. But it cuts both ways: most early colonial ventures went bankrupt, and the payoff was generational, not for the original investors. So the question with SPCX is whether you’re buying the company or the narrative. We think the answer matters a lot at this price.
Starlink
The value of SpaceX starts with Starlink. It’s a genuine threat to the entire communications industry. 8.5 million subscribers, over $10 billion in projected revenue, and roughly 90% of global space-based internet traffic. It’s a near-monopoly with recurring revenue, and it subsidizes everything else SpaceX does. Without Starlink, SpaceX looks like a government contractor with amazing rocket technology. With it, SpaceX is an infrastructure company with a durable revenue base.
On the launch side, nobody is close. SpaceX’s reusable rocket economics give it a structural cost advantage that only widens with scale. The more they launch, the cheaper each launch gets, and the harder it becomes for competitors to close the gap. The moat is real.
What the IPO Actually Gave Them
This is the part of the story we think is most underappreciated.
Being public gives SpaceX something it never had as a private company: stock it can use to buy things. They wasted no time. Almost immediately after listing, SpaceX announced a $60 billion all-stock acquisition of Anysphere, the company behind the AI coding tool Cursor. They couldn’t do that as a private company.
Public equity turns SpaceX from a capital-constrained rocket and internet company into a platform that can acquire its way into AI, defense tech, communications, or whatever it wants, without spending a dollar of cash. The $2.65 trillion market cap isn’t just a number on a screen. It’s a war chest. Expect more acquisitions. This is an important consequence of the IPO.
It’s Expensive. That’s Not a Secret.
At $202 per share, SPCX trades at a triple-digit revenue multiple on roughly $22 to $24 billion in projected 2026 revenue. If you bought today, you’d be buying above where the Street thinks it should be. Michael Burry, to the surprise of few, has publicly said he’s tempted to short it. That doesn’t make him right, but it tells you something about the valuation.
That doesn’t mean it’s a bad investment. But it means the margin for error is thin. If Starlink subscriber growth slows, or if a competitor emerges in satellite internet, or if government contracts dry up, there isn’t much cushion in the price at these levels.
The Lockup Schedule and Why It Matters
As far as “wait-and-see” potential entries, consider the lockup schedule and when insiders and employees can sell shares.
When a company goes public, early investors and employees can’t immediately sell their holdings. They’re “locked up” for a set period, usually 90 to 180 days. The idea is to prevent a flood of selling right out of the gate. But when those restrictions lift, the new supply of shares hitting the market tends to push prices down. It happens reliably. Uber hit an all-time low on its lockup expiration day. Rivian dropped 20% in a single session when Ford started selling.
SpaceX didn’t use the typical single-date lockup. They set up a staggered release, so there are several dates between now and year-end where selling pressure could hit. Because of how SpaceX has done stock compensation, there are stories of cafeteria workers sitting on millions in equity. In our opinion, many of these individuals will be looking to cash in. Here’s the summary of the lockup schedule:
Late July/early August is the first real window. After SpaceX reports Q2 earnings, insiders can sell up to 20% of their locked shares. There’s a bonus tranche too: if the stock stays at least 30% above the $135 IPO price (so $175.50 or higher) for 5 of the 10 trading days heading into that earnings report, an additional 10% unlocks. Given where the stock is trading now, that threshold looks likely to be met, which means up to 30% of insider shares could come to market in one wave.
August through November brings a series of smaller releases. Additional 7% tranches unlock every two to four weeks. It’s designed to add liquidity gradually, but it’s still a steady drip of potential supply hitting the market through the fall.
After Q3 earnings, likely October, comes a larger release of roughly 28% of remaining locked shares. This could be the single biggest supply event before the final expiration.
December 8 is when the standard 180-day lockup fully expires. Everything except Musk’s personal shares becomes freely tradable.
June 2027 is the date for Musk himself. His 6.4 billion shares stay locked for a full year after the IPO.
Historically, the higher the speculative premium at IPO, the worse these dates tend to hit. Each one is a potential overhang worth watching.
The Other Risks
Musk holds super-voting Class B shares with 10 votes each, giving him effective control over the company. He can’t be removed as CEO without his own consent. This is the same governance structure that makes Tesla’s stock a roller coaster, and it means shareholders are along for the ride on whatever Musk decides to do next.
Government dependence has decreased but hasn’t disappeared. Starlink’s consumer and enterprise revenue has diversified the business, but defense contracts and NASA partnerships remain a meaningful share of income. Musk’s political profile adds a layer of unpredictability that cuts in both directions.
And Mars? It’s still a narrative, not a business. Deep space is decades away from generating revenue, if it ever does. The good news is the company doesn’t need Mars to work. Starlink and launch services can sustain SpaceX on their own. But some portion of the current valuation is built on that aspirational story, and aspirational stories are fragile.
Where We Stand
Starlink is a genuinely great business. It justifies a large valuation on its own. The launch monopoly adds to it. The ability to use public equity as currency for acquisitions opens an entirely new chapter. The question is whether $2.65 trillion, five days into trading, is the right price for all of that.
While it certainly could keep rocketing – obvious pun intended – our current assessment is not to rush.
The stock will be volatile. It has Musk’s name on it, and Tesla stock’s history has shown exactly what that means for price swings. The lockup calendar gives you at least four or five natural opportunities to reassess between now and December. If you believe in the long-term thesis, perhaps patience gets rewarded here.
How It Fits in Your Plan
This is where we step back from the SpaceX-specific analysis and talk about something more fundamental.
We’ve seen this pattern before. A generational company goes public, the excitement is justified, and people let that excitement override the plan they already had in place. They buy too much of a single name because the story feels too good to pass up. And for a while, that works. Until it doesn’t.
A sharp pullback in a stock like this isn’t a hypothetical. It’s practically a guarantee at some point, whether from a lockup wave, a broader market correction, a Musk headline, or something nobody sees coming. If SPCX makes up 3% to 5% of your portfolio and it drops 30%, that’s a bad day. If it makes up 20% or more, that’s the kind of drawdown that can derail retirement timelines, delay goals, and pressure you to sell at exactly the wrong moment.
The companies that inspire the most conviction are the ones most likely to become overconcentrated positions. That’s not a coincidence. The better the story, the harder it is to stay disciplined about sizing. But this is a speculative stock trading at a speculative valuation five days into its public life. The fundamentals are real. The price is not yet proven. There’s a difference between believing SpaceX will be one of the most important companies of the next decade and betting your financial plan on it.
If you want exposure, size it so a worst-case outcome doesn’t change your life, and stick to the financial plan we hope you built long before the SpaceX hype started. The best trade is always the one that lets you stay in the game.
