The price SpaceX's private market never set

I loved my colleague Max's most recent Augment Exchange podcast episode, with Andrew Ryan of Alex. Brown, so much, that I asked him if we could write it up as a Deep Dive. He said yes, so here it is! Hope you enjoy, and don't forget to listen to the whole thing!

Deep Dive: The Price SpaceX's Private Market Never Had to Set

Andrew Ryan sees the part of an IPO most investors never do. He runs the Venture Capital Services Group at Alex. Brown, a division of Raymond James, where his team moves shares out of venture funds and into the accounts of the people who own them. He joined Max Melmed on The Augment Exchange this week and, near the end of the conversation, said this about SpaceX:

"There's not one point in SpaceX's entire lifeline where they traded below the previous round. And now it gets to the public and it's trading below the previous round."

By Ryan's count, his is one of three teams on Wall Street that does this work. His seat is downstream of every IPO and tender: his team receives the stock and delivers it. That vantage gives him a specific reading of what happened to SpaceX this summer.

SpaceX's reported tender valuations only went up

The private price history comes from public reporting, not a filing, but every reported move was higher. A June 2024 tender reportedly valued SpaceX at about $210 billion. A December 2024 tender reportedly moved that to $350 billion. A mid-2025 share sale was reported at about $400 billion. A December 2025 insider sale was reported at about $800 billion. Each price was set by the company and its board for a window in which approved holders could sell to approved buyers. None came from continuous public trading.

Then came June 12. SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 a share, which, using the share count from our August 7 edition, implied a valuation of roughly $1.75 trillion. The stock opened at $150 and traded as high as $225.64 in its first week. By late July, it had fallen 20% below the IPO price. It closed as low as $108.27 in early August, then rallied through the first lock-up release and closed back above $135 on August 10.

Ryan's version is shorter: "It's the only time SpaceX has ever traded down in its entire life."

Reported private-company financials and secondary-market indications may be unaudited, incomplete, non-standard, or based on limited transaction activity. They should not be relied upon as fair value, executable pricing, or a basis for any investment decision.

Private tenders leave would-be sellers outside the room

A company-run tender is a controlled window. The company chooses the timing, approves the buyers, and often sets the price. There is no short seller, no index fund rebalancing out, and no holder forced to sell on a Tuesday because a margin call came due. Many of the participants who could push the price down are outside the room. Because tender offers are conducted in controlled windows with a limited set of eligible buyers and sellers, the resulting prices may not reflect the same price-discovery dynamics as continuous public trading.

Ryan put the incentive plainly: "Most of the pushback is they don't want to go public because they don't want to take a mark, right? They're carrying themselves at eight billion and they don't want to go public at four billion."

The transition to public trading can therefore result in different price discovery even without a corresponding change in the issuer's underlying business. Private-company positions are often valued using Level 3 inputs, while publicly traded securities generally have more observable Level 1 or Level 2 valuation inputs. As market data providers like Caplight provide real time pricing, Andrew predicts that we may see a change where private markets assets go "from a level three asset to a level two asset pretty quickly," he said. "So now all of a sudden, like, okay, well, we're gonna have a problem here."

The same logic applies to issuers that have not listed. In May, Anthropic and OpenAI warned that unauthorized transfers of their stock could be void, named platforms, and moved to keep their shares out of SPVs. We covered that fight at the time. Ryan's view is that the policy makes sense for the issuer but creates another problem. "Without SPVs, you've outgrown your pool of capital, which means you're basically just going to sovereigns." A smaller pool of approved holders may mean fewer observable prices and less resistance to movements in the private mark.

Augment and/or its affiliates hold a position in Anthropic.

Reported private-company financials and secondary-market indications may be unaudited, incomplete, non-standard, or based on limited transaction activity. They should not be relied upon as fair value, executable pricing, or a basis for any investment decision.

The shares can arrive days after the price is set

Ryan's business begins where most IPO coverage ends: the day a fund distributes stock to its limited partners. As he described it, the mechanics create a second source of price risk that has nothing to do with the company.

A distribution in kind may be marked as of a prior close. From that date, the LP owns the shares, and in a fund with carry, the general partner's carry may be calculated against that price. The shares themselves can take longer to arrive. "Most people aren't receiving their stock for 10 days," Ryan said. "It's insane. And it's just assumed that that's okay." He contrasted that delay with his own team at Raymond James, which he said can deliver shares the day they arrive from the transfer agent. We have not independently compared those delivery times across firms. The structural point stands: an LP can carry ten days of market risk on a position priced on day zero.

In Ryan's telling, the old business model helps explain the delay. Distribution work was historically done for free, with the agent earning a commission if the LP later sold through the firm. "The longer you keep someone at market risk, the more likely they're gonna say, just sell," he said. "It kind of encourages bad behavior." Ryan characterized that incentive structure as potentially creating conflicts. His summary of the trade-off was even simpler: "The better we got at our job, the less money we made."

The SpaceX lock-up added a third layer. Rather than a single 180-day release, the company staggered eligibility in tranches: roughly 911.5 million shares on August 6, according to SpaceX's prospectus, with further releases reported through the fall and restrictions on Elon Musk and certain other insiders into 2027. Ryan called that structure hard to price. "If you're gonna have a rolling lockup every two weeks, I mean, how do I know when to buy this thing?" Max noted that other companies may copy the schedule. If they do, holders in the next mega-cap listing may face the same uncertainty with even less precedent.

The timing also depends on how the shares are held. An SPV may distribute shares when the lock-up expires because that is what the vehicle was built to do. A traditional venture fund generally has more discretion: it may distribute ten percent a quarter, for example, or wait. Ryan noted that an SPV investor often has a "much more personal association" with the company and wants stock rather than cash. That can leave the SPV investor especially exposed to the gap between the mark date and the date the shares reach the account.

Reported private-company financials and secondary-market indications may be unaudited, incomplete, non-standard, or based on limited transaction activity. They should not be relied upon as fair value, executable pricing, or a basis for any investment decision.

SpaceX broke its IPO price, not its last private mark

The counterargument is in the numbers. SpaceX did not trade below its last reported private tender. That December mark was about $800 billion. Even at the $108.27 low, the company's implied valuation remained above $1.4 trillion on the same share count. The stock fell below the $135 IPO price, which implied roughly twice the last reported private valuation. Ryan's reference to the "previous round" appears to mean the IPO itself. The upward ratchet held through every reported private window and stopped with public trading.

The distinction matters when interpreting a private mark. A holder could measure performance from the tender price, the IPO price, or the first public close. For SpaceX, the implied valuations behind those reference points spanned more than twofold within eight months. Someone who bought in the December tender and someone who bought in the IPO would answer the question "Did SpaceX trade down?" differently, even though both had exposure to the same company.

One company in one summer is not a pattern. SpaceX also differs from other companies that may list in revenue, capital intensity, float, and ownership. Our August 7 edition found that the first lock-up tranche did not produce a simple supply-overhang story. SpaceX's unique lockup structure imposes an additional cost and operational burden to deliver shares multiple times, leading some funds or SPV managers to wait until the final lockup prior to delivering shares. So the real test will be after the 180-day lock-up. Public trading brings more than sellers, too: it adds analyst coverage, index eligibility, scheduled disclosures, and a broader pool of potential buyers.

Ryan kept returning to who reaches the price-discovery event and in what order. "Look at all the people that bought SpaceX at one point seven five trillion dollars, or they put money in now. Now they're trading underwater." His response to the push to open private markets to retirement plans followed from that: "That should be the last thing that happens." Coming from a Wall Street broker with 25 years in the business, that was an unexpected position. His argument was that broad access should follow price discovery, not precede it. SpaceX gave that argument its first real public test this summer.

The full episode covers the history of the Four Horsemen banks, how direct listings and SPACs each solved one problem and created another, and what Ryan would fix first if he could change one part of the system. His answer was transfer agents.

Reported private-company financials and secondary-market indications may be unaudited, incomplete, non-standard, or based on limited transaction activity. They should not be relied upon as fair value, executable pricing, or a basis for any investment decision.

For more company information, recent coverage, and available market data, visit SpaceX on Augment.

📈 Data Point of the Day

$108.27

SpaceX's lowest reported closing price since its June listing, reached in early August. It was about 20% below the $135 IPO price and roughly half the $225.64 intraday high from the stock's first week. Based on the share count reported at the IPO, that close still implied a valuation above the company's last reported private tender.

Reported private-company financials and secondary-market indications may be unaudited, incomplete, non-standard, or based on limited transaction activity. They should not be relied upon as fair value, executable pricing, or a basis for any investment decision.

🎓 Manual

Distribution in kind

A distribution in kind occurs when a fund transfers securities to its limited partners instead of selling them and distributing cash. The distribution may be marked at a price from a specified date, often a prior close, and the general partner's carried interest may be calculated against that mark. The LP then holds the shares and bears market risk from the mark date, including during any delay before the shares reach the LP's account. Some fund agreements use an average price over several days around the distribution, which may reduce the effect of a single day's move.

Podcast: How Venture Services Actually Works | Andrew Ryan, Alex. Brown Raymond James | The Augment Exchange