For years, SpaceX’s private-market valuation seemed to move in only one direction: up.
A reported $210 billion valuation in 2024 became $350 billion, then roughly $400 billion, and eventually about $800 billion in late 2025.
Then SpaceX went public.
And suddenly, investors watched the stock trade below its $135 IPO price.
That shift raises a much bigger question than whether SpaceX’s stock had a bad few weeks:
How different is a price when a company controls who gets to trade, compared with a price set every second by the public market?
According to Andrew Ryan of Alex. Brown, that difference is the key to understanding what happened.
The Private Market Kept Moving Higher
Before the IPO, SpaceX’s reported private-market prices had a remarkably consistent trajectory.
The reported valuations were:
- June 2024: around $210 billion
- December 2024: around $350 billion
- Mid-2025: around $400 billion
- December 2025: around $800 billion
- June 2026 IPO: roughly $1.75 trillion
The important detail is that these were not prices created by continuous trading.
They came through tender offers and controlled share sales, where the company and its board could determine the timing and, in many cases, the participants.
That creates a very different environment from the stock market.
There is no constant stream of buyers and sellers competing to establish a price. There is no short seller betting against the stock. There is no index fund forced to rebalance. And there is no investor suddenly deciding to sell because the market moved sharply that morning.
The private-market price can therefore remain remarkably stable, even when there may be disagreement about what the company is actually worth.
Then SpaceX Entered the Public Market
SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 per share, implying a valuation of roughly $1.75 trillion based on the share count cited in the source.
The stock immediately moved higher.
It opened at $150 and reached an intraday high of about $225.64 during its first week.
But the enthusiasm did not last.
By late July, the stock had fallen around 20% below the IPO price.
In early August, it closed as low as $108.27.
That was a major psychological moment.
SpaceX had finally traded below the price at which public investors had bought into the company.
But there is an important distinction here.
It had not fallen below its last reported private valuation.
Even at $108.27, the implied valuation was still above $1.4 trillion, significantly higher than the roughly $800 billion valuation reported in the final private transaction.
So when Ryan says this was the first time SpaceX had “traded down in its entire life,” the relevant comparison is the IPO price, not necessarily the last private-market valuation.
And that distinction tells us something important about private-market pricing.
A Private Price Isn’t the Same as a Public Price
Imagine you own shares in a private company.
The company announces a tender offer.
A limited group of investors is allowed to participate, and the company approves the buyers and sellers.
A price is established.
That number can then become the reference point for investors, funds and valuation models.
But what happens if there are hundreds of thousands of investors who would disagree with that price?
They don’t necessarily get a vote.
They may not even have access to the transaction.
That’s one of the central issues highlighted in the SpaceX story.
Private-market transactions can establish a valuation without creating the same level of price discovery that exists in public markets.
Public markets work differently.
If enough investors believe a stock is overpriced, they can sell.
If enough investors believe it is underpriced, they can buy.
Those opposing views continuously meet in the market.
That process can be painful for investors, but it is also what makes public prices observable.
The “Mark” Can Become a Problem
This becomes particularly important for venture funds and other private-market investors.
Ryan described a common concern: companies and funds can be reluctant to go public because they don’t want to see their valuation suddenly marked down.
A private company might carry an investment at one valuation for months.
Then the company lists and suddenly there is a live market price.
If that price is substantially lower, the difference becomes visible.
There is no longer much room to argue about what the market thinks the asset is worth.
This is where the difference between Level 3 and Level 1 or Level 2 assets becomes important.
Private assets often rely on assumptions and less observable inputs when determining fair value.
Publicly traded securities have much more observable market data.
As Ryan put it, private assets can move from a Level 3 asset toward a Level 2 asset much more quickly once better market pricing becomes available.
And that can create problems for investors who were previously comfortable with the private mark.
The Bigger Problem Could Be the Shares Themselves
There is another part of the story that is easy to overlook.
Getting the shares into investors’ accounts can take time.
Ryan said that, in many cases, investors receiving stock through an in-kind distribution may not actually receive the shares for around 10 days.
The problem is that the valuation may already have been established on an earlier date.
So an investor could receive shares based on a particular mark, only to discover that the market has moved significantly before those shares actually arrive.
The investor carries the market risk.
This is especially relevant when the underlying stock is volatile.
A 10-day delay in a stable private asset might not matter much.
A 10-day delay in a newly public, heavily watched company can be a very different story.
SpaceX Added Another Layer: The Lock-Up
SpaceX’s IPO also came with a complicated lock-up structure.
Instead of having every restricted shareholder become eligible to sell at exactly the same time, the company used staggered releases.
According to the source, roughly 911.5 million shares became eligible on August 6, with additional releases expected later.
Some insiders, including Elon Musk, remained subject to restrictions extending into 2027.
That creates another challenge for investors trying to understand potential supply.
If millions of shares are scheduled to become available at different points, investors have to think about not just whether insiders and early investors can sell, but when they might actually sell.
That makes supply harder to predict.
And when supply is difficult to predict, price can become more difficult to predict too.
Why SPVs Matter
Special purpose vehicles, or SPVs, add another wrinkle.
An SPV can hold shares on behalf of multiple investors.
When a lock-up expires, the vehicle may have a reason to distribute those shares to its investors.
A traditional venture fund may have more flexibility.
It could distribute a portion of its position over time or decide to wait.
That difference can influence the timing of selling pressure.
It also means two investors who technically own exposure to the same company may experience very different liquidity timelines.
One may receive shares immediately after a restriction expires.
Another may remain invested through a fund structure for longer.
SpaceX’s First Public Dip Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story
It would be tempting to look at the $108.27 closing price and conclude that the private-market valuation was simply wrong.
The source does not support such a simple conclusion.
SpaceX is an unusual company.
Its business, ownership structure, capital requirements and expected growth profile are different from most companies that eventually go public.
And the first few months of trading do not necessarily establish where a stock’s long-term value will settle.
The IPO also brought new forces into the equation.
Public markets provide:
- Continuous price discovery
- A much broader pool of buyers and sellers
- Analyst coverage
- Regular financial disclosures
- Potential index inclusion
- Greater visibility into investor sentiment
- More opportunities for investors to express both bullish and bearish views
So the public market is not simply replacing the private valuation.
It is adding an entirely different mechanism for deciding what investors are willing to pay.
The Real Lesson Isn’t Just About SpaceX
The most interesting part of the SpaceX story may be what it says about the private markets more broadly.
For years, private companies have been able to grow dramatically while remaining outside the continuous scrutiny of public markets.
That has benefits.
Companies can avoid the short-term pressure of quarterly earnings.
Founders can maintain greater control.
Employees and early investors can potentially see their holdings appreciate substantially before an IPO.
But there is a trade-off.
The longer a company stays private, the more important the quality of its private-market pricing becomes.
If only a limited number of transactions establish that price, the valuation may not capture the full range of opinions that would exist in a public market.
SpaceX provides a particularly striking example because its reported valuation climbed from hundreds of billions of dollars to roughly $800 billion privately, before the company entered public markets at an implied valuation of around $1.75 trillion.
That is a massive change in the reference point.
The Question for Investors
This is where the SpaceX story gets especially relevant for anyone looking at private companies today.
What does a private valuation actually tell you?
Is it:
A genuine market-clearing price?
Or is it:
The price at which a limited group of approved buyers and sellers were willing to transact during a specific window?
Those are not necessarily the same thing.
The private market can provide valuable signals.
But once a company becomes public, investors suddenly get access to a much broader and more transparent set of opinions.
And sometimes, that process can be uncomfortable.
What Happens After the Lock-Up?
The next major test for SpaceX may not be the initial IPO volatility at all.
It may be what happens once more shares become freely tradable.
The first lock-up release did not create a simple story of overwhelming supply.
But additional releases could change the balance between buyers and sellers.
The market will also have more time to digest SpaceX’s financial performance, growth prospects and capital requirements.
That is when the company will begin moving away from being a spectacular IPO story and toward being something much more familiar:
A publicly traded company that has to earn its valuation every day.
The Bigger Shift in Private Markets
Ryan’s broader argument goes beyond SpaceX.
As private-market pricing becomes more transparent, companies and investors may have less ability to rely on a single private valuation without scrutiny.
Better data can make private assets easier to price.
But better pricing also means valuations can move down as well as up.
That is the trade-off.
More transparency can create more liquidity, but it can also expose investors to marks they would rather not see.
SpaceX may therefore be an early example of a much larger transition.
Private companies can control their markets for a while.
Eventually, if they go public, they lose that control.
And once the shares begin trading continuously, the market gets a vote.
The Bottom Line
SpaceX did not suddenly lose hundreds of billions of dollars in value simply because its stock traded below $135.
What changed was the mechanism used to discover its price.
For years, private transactions kept pushing the company’s reported valuation higher.
The IPO opened the door to a much larger market, where buyers and sellers could challenge that valuation every day.
That is the real significance of SpaceX’s first major decline.
The company did not just enter the stock market. Its valuation finally entered a market where nobody gets to control the price.