At 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, coinciding with the Nasdaq opening bell, approximately 7 million shares of SpaceX traded hands. The overnight crossing cleared at roughly $107 per share, representing about three-quarters of a billion dollars in value—shares that would never actually reach the open market.

That single transaction captures, in miniature, how SpaceX's most widely anticipated selling event proved far less dramatic—and notably more positive—than the buildup had suggested.

For weeks leading up to Thursday, investors had been warned to prepare for turbulence. The conditions appeared unfavorable: nearly a billion insider and employee shares, representing about 20% of the company, became eligible for sale simultaneously, effectively more than doubling the freely traded float overnight. Lockup expiries—a standard feature of IPO underwriting agreements that typically restrict insiders from selling for 90 to 180 days after listing—are among the most closely watched events in a newly public company's calendar, because they can flood the market with supply before demand adjusts. The stock had already declined by half from its brief post-IPO peak and had fallen below its initial offering price, even with additional mandatory buying from index funds tracking benchmarks such as the Nasdaq-100. The expectation was that this surge in available supply would apply clear downward pressure or, at minimum, generate significant volatility.

Instead, following modest early weakness, the share price stabilized and then climbed 6%.

No Coordinated Exit Among Insiders

The prevailing concern was that insiders holding millions of dollars in SpaceX stock would rush to liquidate in a fire sale. In practice, the lockup expiry prompted reflection rather than panic. For much of the past decade, SpaceX employees did not need a public listing to access liquidity: the company conducted semiannual buybacks—an internal liquidity mechanism—well before companies like Anthropic popularized the approach. These recurring events allowed staff to sell portions of their equity over time, meaning that many longtime holders had already partially cashed out well before the IPO.

A former SpaceX employee who spent most of the 2010s at the company described each buyback round as "a whole game-theory thing" of estimating how much to request. Demand from external investors was typically so strong that employees seeking to sell were prorated down to a single-digit percentage of their intended offering, the former employee told Fortune, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the nature of their current work.

"These are not people waiting to get their first dollar back," the former employee said. "We've had chances over the past 10 years."

The lockup expiry now gives shareholders the autonomy to borrow against their holdings, transfer shares into trusts, or diversify portfolios without requiring company approval. The former employee noted that informal alumni networks exist primarily to help navigate the influx of financial advisors and decisions around sudden wealth—not to coordinate group sales. There was no organized plan for a mass sell-off. "It's probably the most talented engineering team that exists," he said. "Whatever the magic is within those walls—they always figure out how to get stuff done."

Analysts: The Selling Was Already Priced In

If insiders were not panicking, neither were outside observers. Several analysts suggested to Fortune that the classic Wall Street adage applied: this event was already priced into the stock—a pattern not uncommon around lockup expiries, where shares often drift lower in the weeks leading up to the unlock as short-term traders position themselves, then stabilize or rebound once the anticipated supply actually arrives.

"The stock's been down almost every day for the last three or four weeks in anticipation of this," said Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, noting a decline from approximately $152 on July 9 toward $110.

For event-driven funds, hedge funds, and other short-term traders, the logic is straightforward: when additional share supply is expected, sellers position themselves ahead of the event, then cover their shorts once the supply actually hits the market. "It's always a cat-and-mouse game," Luria added.

Under that interpretation, the preceding weeks' decline may have stemmed less from investor concerns about AI capital expenditures following earnings and more from profit-taking ahead of the lockup expiry.

Ivan Feinseth, chief investment officer at Tigress Financial Partners, characterized the situation as a healthy transfer of ownership. The unlock, he argued, is "a largely technical event that accelerates the transition of ownership from insiders to a deeper, more stable public float, rather than a signal of deteriorating fundamentals."

Because the lockup expiry functions as a liquidity event, major institutional buyers tend to wait for it, the analysts explained. "So if you want to establish a large position, instead of a continuous bid—which raises the price you're buying at—you'd rather wait for a liquidity event, and then go to a broker to match you with a large order, so you're not impacting the price as much."

The buyer base in this scenario is fundamentally driven, according to Feinseth. Long-term growth managers and event-driven hedge funds are "being actively pitched this dislocation as an opportunity to build positions in what many see as a generational compounder at a temporarily depressed valuation," he wrote. Morgan Stanley has also used the "generational compounder" designation for SpaceX.

Underpinning the bullish case, Feinseth noted, is a still-intact investment thesis and approximately 92% year-over-year revenue growth.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.