Major financial publications appeared to be in disagreement this month, publishing three different dates for when 319 million additional shares of SpaceX would unlock this month.
At Wednesday’s share price, that unlock is worth about $46 billion — a figure that should certainly motivate shareholders to decide on an exact date for the expansion of the float.
However, nobody seemed to know.
- CNBC reported, “On Aug. 20, another 319 million shares could unlock, according to the prospectus.”
- Quartz guessed earlier, crediting Barron’s, “A second release of 319 million shares is scheduled for Aug. 12.”
- TechTimes and TradingKey went with August 12, too.
- Motley Fool guessed a later date, telling readers, “On the 70th calendar day following SpaceX’s debut, which is nine days from now on Aug. 21, another 7% of early release-eligible insider shares are available to be sold.”
- A website tracking SpaceX dated the unlock “~August 21, 2026,” indicating obvious confusion.
The unlock, as described in the prospectus, isn’t precisely 319 million but “up to 319 million shares” plus the possibility of more given that the figure “excludes shares held by ‘affiliates.’”
For practical purposes, we’ll adopt that convention below.
When to expect the SpaceX float to increase
The earliest guess, August 12, is easy to invalidate.
The current number of SPCX shares outstanding is 7.7 billion and that number is unchanged from three days ago. Every major financial website agrees that the float of SpaceX didn’t increase by 319 million yesterday.
The next two guesses are August 20 and 21.
Well, we know that SpaceX priced its IPO on the evening of June 11, and Nasdaq trading opened the following morning.
The cover of that prospectus reads, “Prospectus Dated June 11, 2026.”
Every lockup trigger inside it counts from that June 11 date while the release table sets the 319 million share tranche at the “70th day after the date of this prospectus.”
Putting it all together, June 11, 2026 plus 70 days is August 20.
Read more: SpaceX IPO banks yell ‘buy’ as stock craters
The same June 11 anchor produces confirmed dates for additional unlocks after elapsed times: September 9, October 24, and December 8.
All of these dates are printed in the filing, confirming that June 11 is the correct anchor.
The SpaceX unlock is next week
Although the August 21 cohort got pretty close, the August 12 camp were nowhere near.
TradingKey reblogged the error anyway, saying, “Approximately 319 million shares could be released as soon as August 12.”
So did Asbury Capital, an advisory firm of Steven Engle. Its client-guidance post incorrectly dates the unlock of 319 million shares to “roughly August 12.”
Peter Singlehurst, who heads a private companies team at Baillie Gifford, told 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.”
Unprecedented, perhaps. Unpublished, no.
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