SpaceX's (Nasdaq:SPCX) lockup expiry was meant to trigger a wave of selling, but the absence of a market collapse drew sidelined buyers back in, Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Matt Britzman has this week highlighted.
Britzman, in a note, said the episode inverts the usual pattern of investor behaviour around anticipated events.
"SpaceX investors have done the opposite: sell the rumour, buy the news", Britzman commented, adding that avoiding the worst case was enough to rekindle optimism once expectations had turned too negative.
Britzman said Grok's comeback matters more over the long run than the lockup dynamics, since SpaceX had largely been written off as a serious frontier AI model contender.
Grok 4.6 now runs broadly competitive with leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic at a much lower cost, with Grok 4.7 expected within weeks, Grok 5 slated for year-end, and a Cursor deal nearing completion.
Because few investors treat SpaceX's own AI models as a meaningful revenue driver, Britzman said this is one part of the story where expectations may be running behind reality.
He flagged the cost of the AI buildout as the more pressing near-term concern, noting that Elon Musk's ambition of 10 GW of data-centre capacity by the end of next year would demand a huge outlay with no clear funding plan disclosed.
Strong results from neoclouds CoreWeave and Nebius offer the bulls some support, Britzman said, with Nebius eyeing contract pricing in line with SpaceX's recent deals that could shorten data-centre payback periods to one or two years.
The question now, per Hargreaves Lansdown's 13 August note, is not whether current pricing justifies the buildout but how long that pricing holds.
