SpaceX short interest falls to around 11% of publicly traded shares, according to S3 Partners, down sharply from a peak of 34% just a week earlier. The retreat reflects both bearish investors closing positions and a mechanical dilution of the short ratio after the stock’s first major lockup expiration flooded the market with new supply.
‘Shorts that wanted to short are out of bullets,’ said Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director of predictive analytics at S3 Partners. ‘Only so much money you can put into a trade.’
What Triggered the SpaceX Short Interest Falls
The story begins on 4 August 2026, when SpaceX filed its first quarterly earnings as a public company. The numbers were striking for their scale: capital expenditure reached $18.4 billion in the quarter, of which $15.8 billion went towards AI compute infrastructure. Revenue across the three main segments told a different story: connectivity brought in $4.3 billion (with $1.6 billion in operating income), AI revenue hit $2.6 billion, and the space division contributed $960 million, with year-on-year growth of 32%, 350%, and 29% respectively, according to InsiderFinance.
Investors fixated on the capex line. Spending was more than twice total revenue, raising questions about how long the company could sustain the pace. Short sellers moved in, pushing short interest as a percentage of the tradable float to levels that, according to Yahoo Finance, had already overtaken Tesla’s total short interest before the first earnings release.
Then came the float expansion. When SpaceX listed on 12 June 2026, only around 4 to 5% of total shares made up the public float, per PurePowerPicks, leaving the remainder locked up. On 6 August, just over 911 million shares became eligible to trade after the first lockup tranche expired. That single event exceeded the 639 million shares sold in the IPO and represented roughly 7% of shares outstanding. Mechanically, a larger denominator deflates the short-interest ratio even if the number of short shares holds steady.
A conditional bonus tranche of approximately 455.8 million shares did not release alongside it. Under the prospectus terms, that block required SPCX to trade at least 30% above its $135 IPO price for five of ten consecutive trading days before the Q2 earnings release, a threshold the stock did not clear. Those shares roll into the full 180-day lockup expiry on 8 December 2026, per PurePowerPicks.
The Lockup Calendar Still Has Rounds Left
Shares rallied 11% on Wednesday to around $148, lifting SPCX roughly 10% above its IPO price and about 41% off its 3 August low. Short covering contributed to the move: investors closing bearish positions must buy back shares, adding fuel to a rally already in motion.
But the calendar is not finished with the stock. A Day-70 tranche of approximately 319 million shares could unlock on 20 August, followed by roughly 700 million in September and a similar number in October, according to the prospectus. A Q3 earnings-triggered release could free an additional order of around 1.3 billion shares, representing approximately 28% of the 180-day restricted block, in October or November 2026, according to StockAlarm. Certain early investors face a separate extended restriction schedule running into Q2 2027.
Greg Martin, co-founder of Rainmaker Securities, told CNBC that the near-term path for SPCX may be more affected by the lockup schedule lifting than by any fundamental or strategic development. The early-investor base is broad and varied. Jessie Bates III, a safety for the Atlanta Falcons, told CNBC he plans to sell his entire SpaceX stake, which he originally acquired for $150,000 in 2022.
S3 Partners co-founder Bob Sloan has pointed to SpaceX’s sheer size as a complicating factor: the stock’s positioning ripples through broader market strategies, including Delta 1 trading books, meaning the tug-of-war between short sellers and new float is not playing out in isolation.
By the Motley Fool‘s reckoning, SPCX ranked as the world’s second-largest communications services stock by market capitalisation at the time of the first lockup expiration. For short sellers reassessing their positions, the December full-lockup expiry and any Q3 earnings-triggered release are the next moments that could decisively shift the supply-demand balance.
