SpaceX stock down for week following share unlock, big rocket news from China

SpaceX's stock (SPCX) retreated throughout the week, sinking to its initial public offering (IPO) price as yet another share unlocking occurred and fresh rocket competition headlines emerged. Despite a brief Friday surge, the stock dipped more than 2% for the period and fell below the $135 IPO price. On Thursday, approximately 319 million shares belonging to early employees and investors became tradable, part of a phased lockup that will release around 88% of SpaceX's 13 billion shares by 2027.

This latest unlock followed a significant one earlier in the month when up to 911.5 million shares became tradable on August 6, which saw the stock rise by 6%, marking a noteworthy bullish move.

Additional lockups are on the horizon, with a 1.3 billion-share tranche expected to become tradable around SpaceX's third-quarter earnings in early November, followed by the 180-day expiry in December. However, the CEO Elon Musk's personal shares, totaling 6.42 billion, remain locked until June 2027. In other SpaceX news, CEO Elon Musk provided an update on Starship, indicating that the ship should be reachable with the tower within a few months.

He suggested that if there had been a tower in the ocean where they practiced landing the ship, it would have been caught. The first reflight of Starship is now planned for either the end of the year or early next year, moving the timeline back from the originally anticipated August launch.

Meanwhile, in China, a significant milestone has been achieved. Chinese startup LandSpace successfully landed the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket on a pad at the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone in northwest China on Tuesday. This marks the first time a Chinese company has recovered an orbital-class booster on land.

The rocket's upper stage had delivered satellites to orbit during its second-ever flight. Although the December 2025 debut reached orbit, the booster was lost to what LandSpace described as abnormal combustion during descent. This milestone narrows the competitive gap that separates SpaceX from other launch providers, including US rivals like Rocket Lab (RKLB).

While the Chinese Zhuque-3 is a 216-foot-tall rocket capable of lifting 40,350 pounds of cargo to low earth orbit, SpaceX's Falcon 9 can lift 50,265 pounds. Nonetheless, SpaceX's record of landing boosters over 600 times since 2015 underscores its expertise in reusable rocketry, which is now no longer limited to SpaceX alone.