SpaceX's Lock-Up Expiry Lands Quietly as $16.8 Billion Terafab Venture Steals the Spotlight
Published on 08/07/2026 at 15:22 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The first major test of SpaceX's post-IPO trading life has come and gone without the fireworks many investors braced for. Thursday's release of roughly 911.5 million shares — about 7 percent of all outstanding stock — from its initial lock-up period was expected to unleash a wave of insider selling. Instead, the equity finished the session higher, and the follow-through on Friday suggested the feared supply glut had failed to materialize.
In German trading, the stock changed hands at €99.66 on Friday, essentially flat on the day, after Thursday's €99.55 close marked a 6.55 percent advance. The weekly gain stands at 6.06 percent, though the relief rally does little to mask a bruising month that has left the shares down 23.17 percent. At the Wall Street close on Thursday, the stock sat at $108.27 — still well beneath the $135 IPO price from June.
A $16.8 Billion Bet on Chips and Robots
The lock-up release coincided with a blockbuster announcement that gave long-term bulls fresh ammunition. SpaceX and Tesla unveiled plans for a joint $16.8 billion investment in "Terafab," a semiconductor complex spanning 100 million square feet in Texas's Grimes County. The facility will manufacture AI chips destined for humanoid robots and orbital data centers, deepening the operational entanglement between Musk's various technology ventures — a dynamic that has caught the attention of investors like Kevin O'Leary.
The "Shark Tank" personality said Friday he intends to buy SpaceX shares within the next 60 days, citing the long-term value of cross-integration across Musk's empire. His optimism stands in stark contrast to the bearish camp: Seeking Alpha slapped a "Strong Sell" rating on the stock the same day, arguing that a market capitalization of roughly $1.65 trillion remains unjustified even after a 25 percent decline since the June IPO.
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Earnings Beat Masks the Cost of Ambition
The Terafab news lands in an already crowded news cycle. On August 4, SpaceX delivered its inaugural quarterly report as a public company, and the headline numbers impressed. Second-quarter revenue climbed to $7.8 billion, a 90 percent year-over-year jump that comfortably cleared the $6.9 billion analyst consensus. The net loss narrowed to $541 million, or $0.09 per share, from roughly $1 billion a year earlier, while adjusted EBITDA surged 191 percent to $3.538 billion.
Starlink remains the growth engine. The satellite internet service ended the quarter with 12 million paying subscribers, up from 10.3 million three months earlier and roughly double the year-ago figure. The 1.7 million net additions in the quarter marked the strongest quarterly gain to date, even as average revenue per user slipped from $85 to $66 monthly — a function of international expansion into lower-priced markets. The AI segment, bundling cloud services, Grok, and X subscriptions, grew an even more striking 247 percent to $2.56 billion.
Yet the stock fell about 7 percent in US trading after the release. The culprit wasn't the earnings picture but the capital requirements attached to it. SpaceX plowed $18.369 billion into investments during the quarter, with $15.828 billion earmarked for AI infrastructure alone. A cash cushion of $100 billion offered some reassurance, but the sheer scale of the spending spree gave some investors pause.
Wall Street's Valuation Standoff
The post-earnings reaction from the sell-side has been anything but uniform. JPMorgan raised its price target from $225 to $240 on Tuesday, maintaining a buy recommendation and signaling that Starlink's growth trajectory and AI momentum outweigh concerns about capital intensity. Piper Sandler moved in the opposite direction on Wednesday, trimming its target from $156 to $140 — a cut the firm explicitly attributed not to fundamental deterioration but to the impending increase in tradable shares and the hefty investment pipeline. The wide dispersion of targets in between underscores just how unsettled the debate over fair value remains for this young listing.
What's Next: Starship, Starlink V3, and an Ambitious Revenue Target
Management used the earnings call to sketch an aggressive near-term roadmap. Elon Musk said the 14th Starship test flight could launch as soon as August, pending regulatory approval, with plans to deploy the first next-generation Starlink V3 satellites and attempt the first landing of the upper stage. A catch of the booster at the launch tower is targeted for late August. The company also announced a partnership with Nvidia to send a satellite payload dubbed Starmind AI1 into orbit carrying Nvidia's Rubin and Vera-generation chips for space-based computing.
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The more immediate catalyst, however, may be the target Musk reiterated: reaching a $100 billion annualized recurring revenue run-rate by year-end. That ambition, combined with the resilience shown during the lock-up release, has given the stock a firmer footing than many anticipated. Technical indicators support the picture of stabilization — the RSI sits at roughly 42, squarely in neutral territory, while annualized volatility of around 75 to 79 percent still reflects the jittery nature of the young listing.
With further lock-up tranches scheduled to unlock through December 8, the supply overhang hasn't fully cleared. But for now, the market's verdict is clear: the combination of a record quarter, a transformative manufacturing project, and a surprisingly orderly share release has convinced enough buyers that the risks are worth the ride.
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