No summary of H1 2026 is complete without SpaceX. When the company priced its IPO at $135 per share on June 12 and raised $86.2 billion, more than three times the previous record set by Saudi Aramco in 2019, it rewrote what an initial public offering can be. At a valuation of $1.77 trillion, it entered the public markets as one of the most valuable companies in the world. The opening days reflected that enthusiasm: the stock surged to a high of around $201 shortly after listing before settling back.

The securities finance picture that emerged in the days and weeks that followed was equally significant, though structurally different from the other names in this cohort. First-available DataLend data from June 15, three days post-IPO, showed 18.6 million shares already on loan at an on-loan value of approximately $3.6 billion, with fees in the mid-to-high hundreds of basis points. But that initial fee level proved short-lived. By June 16, as additional supply entered the market and the stock briefly touched its post-IPO high of around $201, borrow costs dropped sharply to below 50 basis points. Over the following week they stabilized at similar levels, and supply appeared broadly adequate to meet demand, a meaningfully different dynamic from Quantinuum’s constrained market or Cerebras’s initial scarcity.

What has been anything but modest is the growth in loan volumes. As SpaceX’s stock declined steadily from its opening-week highs, trading through $154 by June 22, back to the mid-$160s briefly, then grinding lower toward the $145 range by early July, short interest built at a remarkable pace. Shares on loan expanded from 18.6 million on June 15 to over 211 million by July 10: an eleven-fold increase in under four weeks. Over that same period, on-loan value grew from approximately $3.6 billion to around $30.7 billion, reflecting the combination of volume growth and a stock that, even as it declined, remained a very large-cap name. Utilization reached 77% and over 38% of the float was on loan as of the latest data. The stock now sits just above the $135 IPO price, meaning that short sellers who established positions during the stock’s early peak have broadly been right.

Despite per-unit fees that are modest relative to the other names in this cohort, the sheer scale of the loan balance translates to substantial revenue. SpaceX was a top-20 U.S. equity earner in June despite IPO’ing halfway through the month, a striking illustration of how a single listing can reshape the revenue landscape in short order.

The more significant securities finance story may still be ahead. SpaceX’s lockup structure is unusually complex: a 20% unlock for employees and pre-IPO holders is expected following Q2 earnings in late July, with an additional 10% tranche available if the stock has traded 30% or more above the $135 IPO price for five of ten consecutive trading days prior to that report. Further incremental unlocks of 7% each are scheduled for late August through late October. The critical constraint is at the top: Elon Musk’s 6.4 billion shares, together with a broader extended-investor block representing more than 63% of pre-IPO shares outstanding, remain locked until at least Q1 2027, with Musk’s position locked until June 2027. Each staggered unlock event represents a potential inflection in borrow supply, fee dynamics and short positioning. The remainder of 2026 is, in many ways, a SpaceX lockup calendar.

The IPO has also generated notable spillover effects. With SpaceX’s listing reordering the competitive landscape of the space sector, names including AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) and Virgin Galactic/Rocket Lab (SPCE) have attracted incremental short interest from traders repositioning around the new entrant’s competitive implications.