SpaceX is heading toward another potentially volatile milestone on September 9, when roughly 319 million additional shares held by insiders become eligible for sale, testing whether the company's AI infrastructure ambitions can sustain its current stock momentum. The event marks the third lockup expiry since SpaceX's initial public offering in July 2026, and it comes as the company's shares have rebounded to near IPO levels following a surprisingly resilient performance after the first, much larger lockup release in August.

The September 9 expiry will be closely watched because SpaceX has already demonstrated that a massive increase in share supply does not necessarily trigger a sharp selloff. On August 6, more than 900 million shares held by early investors became liquid, yet instead of plunging, SpaceX shares rebounded above their $135 IPO price within days and subsequently rallied about 35% in the five trading sessions following the expiry, adding roughly $500 billion to the company's market value.

Shares are now trading around $149, roughly where they opened on their first day of trading at $150, and are about 20% higher than immediately after the first lockup event. The staggered schedule of lockup expirations is designed to prevent a sudden flood of shares from overwhelming the market, but each release creates a fresh question for investors: will insiders and early shareholders take advantage of the liquidity, or continue holding their stakes and betting on Elon Musk's long-term ambitions.

What's Driving the Bullish Case for SpaceX?

Analyst enthusiasm for SpaceX remains notably strong, with an average price target of $225.87 per share, implying roughly 50% upside from current levels. According to recent data, 28 analysts rate the stock Buy, while three have an Overweight rating, seven have a Hold rating, one has an Underweight rating, and only two have a Sell rating.

The bullish narrative centers on SpaceX's position as a potential winner in the artificial intelligence infrastructure boom. Oppenheimer analyst Timothy Horan raised his price target for SpaceX to $280 from $250, maintaining an Outperform rating, which represents an almost 90% upside from current levels. Horan believes SpaceX could be a major beneficiary of the shortage of artificial intelligence infrastructure and argues that the company's AI revenue is growing faster than expected as it develops increasingly capable models.

"SpaceX has the ability to bring on infrastructure faster than anyone else, and is using this infrastructure and its data to improve its own models faster than anyone else," said Timothy Horan, analyst at Oppenheimer.

Timothy Horan, Analyst at Oppenheimer

Investor Ross Gerber, president and CEO of Gerber Kawasaki, is even more bullish on SpaceX's long-term prospects. Gerber sees greater potential in SpaceX than Tesla and believes the two Musk-led companies could eventually merge. He highlighted SpaceX, Starlink, and xAI (Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company) as among the company's biggest attractions, arguing that xAI is also critical to Tesla's future.

Why the Massive Spending on AI Infrastructure Raises Concerns?

The bullish argument, however, faces one significant obstacle: the enormous amount SpaceX is spending to build its AI infrastructure. SpaceX's capital expenditure reached $28.5 billion during the first six months of 2026, a 308% increase from the same period a year earlier. In the second quarter alone, the company spent $18.4 billion on capital projects, with 86% of that directed toward AI infrastructure.

Morgan Stanley expects the company to spend as much as $64 billion on AI infrastructure this year, substantially more than earlier estimates. SpaceX is building data center capacity both for its own AI needs and potentially for external customers, owning the Grok AI model through its acquisition of X and attempting to build an infrastructure business around the rapidly growing demand for computing power.

The economics of this massive investment remain uncertain. SpaceX generated $7.8 billion in sales in the second quarter, meaning its capital expenditure was more than twice its quarterly revenue. While the company has argued that investors should not be overly concerned because it expects the investments to pay for themselves relatively quickly and remains on track to reach $100 billion in annualized revenue by the end of 2026, the timeline for profitability is unclear.

Steps to Understanding SpaceX's AI Infrastructure Strategy

• Revenue Model Uncertainty: According to regulatory filings, SpaceX's ability to fund some of the spending depends heavily on compute agreements with companies such as Anthropic and Google, which can reportedly be terminated with only a few months' notice, creating revenue risk.
• Competitive Positioning: There is uncertainty over whether SpaceX's AI models can win enterprise customers away from established players such as Anthropic and OpenAI, which have deeper relationships with major corporations.
• Long-Term Vision: SpaceX's ambitions to eventually build AI data centers in space add another potentially transformative opportunity, but that project appears to be several years away from implementation.

Stifel analyst Jonathan Siegmann has dismissed some of the concerns surrounding SpaceX's spending, arguing that the massive capital expenditure reflects genuine demand for AI data capacity. He stated that the company is accelerating its capacity investments accordingly to capture market share in a rapidly growing sector.

The key question for investors ahead of the September 9 lockup expiry is whether SpaceX's enormous investment in computing capacity will translate into sustainable revenue and profits. Early employees and investors sitting on enormous unrealized gains face a personal decision: will they take advantage of the liquidity to realize life-changing wealth by selling even a portion of their holdings at around $150, or will they continue betting on Musk's vision for the company's AI-powered future.