SpaceX Stock Sits $10 Above IPO as Wall Street Weighs AI Revenue Boom Against Looming Lock-Up Wave

SpaceX shares hover near $145, up 7.6% from IPO, as AI contracts with Alphabet and Anthropic promise $26B annual revenue, but lock-up expiry and dilution weigh on sentiment.

SpaceX shares are treading water near their listing price, caught between a transformative pipeline of artificial intelligence contracts and mounting concerns over a tidal wave of insider shares about to hit the market. The stock closed Monday at roughly $145.29, a marginal 7.6% premium to the $135 initial public offering price from June 12 – and a far cry from the $225.64 peak reached just days after the IPO.

Trading on July 13 saw the stock oscillate between $145.07 and $152.50, with roughly 46.8 million shares changing hands – well below the daily average of 88.8 million since the listing. Market capitalisation stands at approximately $1.92 trillion, a figure that derives much of its heft from the narrative that SpaceX is no longer just a rocket-and-satellite company.

AI Infrastructure Brings Billions

That narrative gained concrete weight in recent weeks. Alphabet has signed a contract to pay SpaceX approximately $920 million per month starting in October 2026 for access to a cluster of roughly 110,000 Nvidia GPUs and associated computing resources. The deal runs through June 2029. Separately, AI lab Anthropic has committed to using SpaceX’s Colossus-1 data centre. Combined, market observers estimate these infrastructure agreements could generate annual revenue of $26 billion – a massive leap from the $18.7 billion SpaceX reported for 2025, itself a 33% year-over-year increase.

The company remains unprofitable at the net line, posting a $4.9 billion loss last year, largely attributed to the merger with xAI. Yet the scope of the AI pivot has prompted at least one notable shift in analyst sentiment. On July 12, Wall Street Zen upgraded its rating on SpaceX from Sell to Hold, acknowledging that the stock’s 34% decline from its peak has recalibrated the risk-reward equation. Several other houses initiated coverage in early July after post-IPO quiet periods expired, though the analyst community remains deeply split on long-term valuation.

Operational Backbone: Starlink and Starship

The core business continues to thrum. On July 11, SpaceX launched 24 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base using a Falcon 9 first-stage booster that completed its 35th successful flight. The Starlink constellation now numbers more than 9,600 satellites, serving approximately 10.3 million subscribers. These cash flows underwrite the rapid development of Starship, which is preparing for its 13th integrated test flight this week.

But for all the operational momentum, the stock’s trajectory has been defined by two overhanging factors: the all-stock acquisition of Anysphere, parent of the AI code editor Cursor, for $60 billion – a deal that significantly dilutes existing shareholders – and the mechanics of a very tight float.

The Lock-Up Loom

Investor George Noble has publicly warned that the IPO may represent one of the largest "exit liquidity" operations in history, arguing the listing was designed to let long-time private backers cash out rather than to offer new investors a growth vehicle. That argument gains weight from a reported insider sale of $1.2 million – modest in absolute terms but psychologically potent in a market where only 5% of the 13.1 billion outstanding shares are freely tradable.

The tight free float has amplified volatility since June. That is about to change. Beginning in late July and early August, immediately after the second-quarter earnings report, the first lock-up restrictions expire for employees and early investors. Analysts estimate that roughly 911 million shares could become eligible for sale, representing about 20% of the shares that can be unlocked early and effectively doubling the current float.

Earnings as the Next Trigger

All eyes are now on the company’s first quarterly report since going public, scheduled for August 6, 2026. That filing will provide the first clear view of margins in the newly integrated AI division and could determine whether the stock holds above its IPO price or breaks decisively below it.

For now, SpaceX shares are hovering at a level that reflects a cautious but growing recognition of the company’s evolving business model – but also the immediate pressure of supply. The market’s ability to absorb the coming wave of locked-up shares without a deeper slide will test whether the AI revenue story is enough to offset the gravitational pull of dilution.