Seventeen years after joining SpaceX as an early engineer, Andre Lavoie is preparing to unlock one of the most lucrative payoffs in modern corporate history. Hired back in 2009 when the private space firm was still a risky startup, Lavoie helped design the pressure tanks that power SpaceX’s iconic rockets, and took part of his compensation in company stock — a common incentive used by early-stage ventures to attract talent when cash reserves are tight. Today, that 200,000-share grant is valued at roughly $23 million (£17 million), and the 63-year-old veteran says he plans to begin selling small tranches of his holdings as soon as they become available.
“Every chance I get going forward, I’ll sell a little bit more,” Lavoie told the BBC in an interview. “The shares have been going up so radically it keeps messing up my life plans – you really can’t know the future, so it’s better to sell early and in intervals.” Lavoie is far from alone in his windfall: following SpaceX’s landmark June IPO on the Nasdaq, the largest initial public offering in global history that valued the rocket and satellite manufacturer at more than $2 trillion, founder Elon Musk confirmed that the listing had turned an estimated “several thousand” employees into millionaires — including frontline production line staff. Independent reports put the number of new millionaires created by the IPO at roughly 4,400.
Unlike standard public listings that release all eligible insider shares for trading at once, SpaceX has structured its share unlock in staggered batches. The first 20% of locked shares became available for trading on August 6, with additional batches rolling out through the remainder of 2026. The staggered release gives early shareholders full flexibility over their exit strategy: while Lavoie has opted for gradual selling to lock in gains, other long-term employees have chosen to hold their entire stakes in hopes of larger long-term returns.
The June IPO briefly pushed Elon Musk past the milestone of becoming the world’s first trillionaire, though a subsequent cool-down in the stock price pulled his net worth back below the trillion-dollar mark within a matter of weeks. When SpaceX released its first quarterly earnings as a public company this week, the results laid bare the firm’s aggressive growth strategy: quarterly revenue nearly doubled year-over-year to hit $7.8 billion (£5.8 billion), but capital spending ballooned to $18.3 billion — more than six times the amount spent in the same period a year earlier. The company posted a net loss of $143 million for the three months ending in June, and a cumulative loss of $2 billion for the first half of 2026.
The large loss and massive spending on artificial intelligence development spooked investors, pushing SpaceX shares lower in trading following the earnings release. On a post-earnings investor call, Musk pushed back against critics, arguing that markets are underestimating the long-term potential of the company’s Starlink satellite internet division — the only segment of SpaceX currently turning a profit. Musk predicted that Starlink could eventually deliver the majority of global internet connectivity.
Debate among industry analysts over SpaceX’s current valuation remains deeply split. Some Wall Street analysts have argued that the company’s current market value is inflated by hype around its ties to Musk’s AI venture xAI, echoing broader concerns that AI-linked firms from SpaceX to OpenAI and Anthropic carry overly stretched valuations. Some analysts estimate SpaceX’s fair value is less than half its current public market price, while Sinead O’Sullivan, a former NASA economist, told the BBC in June that she views SpaceX as largely an “Elon Musk ego project,” arguing that investors are buying into the Musk brand more than the underlying space industry business.
Other aerospace analysts argue that the recent share price volatility has far more to do with broader macroeconomic market trends than fundamental shifts at SpaceX. Ron Epstein, aerospace analyst at Bank of America Securities, noted that investors who write off SpaceX purely as an AI play are misjudging the company’s core impact. “They’re not just a compute provider. They’re not just an AI company. It’s a far more complicated picture than that,” Epstein explained. He pointed out that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has cut the cost of launching payloads to orbit from $10,000-$20,000 per kilogram to roughly $2,000, transforming access to space: “they have built a railroad to space.”
For his part, Lavoie remains bullish on SpaceX’s long-term prospects even as he cashes out part of his stake. Lavoie says the proceeds from his share sales will fund two personal projects: a hotel he is renovating in Pontebba, located in Italy’s northeastern Friuli region, and a small local brewery. His top priority for the future, he says, is partnering with a local environmental organization to raise public awareness of air pollution in the area.
Looking back on his early days at the company, Lavoie recalled that he interviewed directly with Elon Musk before being hired. “He’s a very charming person when he wants something,” Lavoie said. He declined to comment on Musk’s public political stances, noting “that’s his business,” but he offered unreserved praise for SpaceX and its team: “I’ve always been happily supportive and impressed, and would work hard with those incredible people again.” Even as he locks in his early windfall, Lavoie maintains that “The solid business model of SpaceX will prove itself to be worth the investment.”