SpaceX is going public. Your plan should already exist.

Almost certainly not on day one. Employee shares are typically subject to a lockup agreement that restricts selling for a period after the listing — often around 180 days, though the exact duration, structure, and any early-release provisions are set out in SpaceX’s offering documents and your own equity agreements. Some IPOs also include staggered or performance-based early releases. Your first step is confirming your specific dates — they are the spine of every other decision.

Shares you already own from vested RSUs become shares of a publicly traded company — they now have a market price that updates in real time. You were already taxed on them as ordinary income when they vested, so the listing itself isn’t a taxable event for those shares. What changes is your cost-basis math: gains or losses relative to your vest-date value will be capital gains or losses when you eventually sell, with the long-term rate available once you’ve held past one year from vest.

Nothing automatic — your options remain on their existing terms. What changes is the fair market value used in every calculation: the AMT bargain element on exercise is now measured against the public market price rather than a 409A valuation. That makes exercise timing both more transparent and more volatile. A public price also opens strategies that didn’t exist before, including exercising and selling in the same year once the lockup lifts. The exercise plan you built as a private-company employee should be rebuilt this month.

It depends on variables specific to you: your strike prices, available cash to cover AMT, current and projected tax brackets, and whether you’re targeting long-term capital gains treatment (which requires holding exercised shares at least one year after exercise and two years after grant). Exercising earlier starts the holding-period clock during the lockup — time you can’t sell anyway — but commits cash and locks in AMT exposure at whatever the price is that day. Well-planned outcomes may involve batched exercises across multiple tax years rather than a single decision. This is a modeling question, not a gut-feel question.

A 10b5-1 plan is a pre-arranged trading plan that schedules future sales according to fixed rules set when you adopt it. For employees who may possess material nonpublic information — or who simply want to remove emotion from selling — it provides a structured, compliant path to diversify on a schedule. Whether one fits you depends on your role, your company’s trading policy, and your selling goals. It’s a conversation worth having with an advisor before the lockup expires, not after.

The tender offer era of SpaceX equity planning is effectively over. Tender offers existed because there was no public market; once shares trade on the Nasdaq and lockups expire, the public market becomes the liquidity mechanism. If you sold shares in past tender offers, those transactions still shape your remaining cost basis and lot structure — which is exactly the kind of record an advisor will want organized before building your post-lockup plan.

By refusing to let everything happen in one calendar year. A large share sale, an ISO exercise, and ordinary RSU vest income can stack into a single tax year — and because capital gains brackets, AMT, and ordinary income rates all compound within a calendar year, spreading these events across years can materially change the outcome. Advance planning spreads these across years: sequencing sales to manage capital gains brackets, timing ISO exercises to control AMT, harvesting losses elsewhere in the portfolio, and using charitable vehicles where they fit your goals. The savings from sequencing alone routinely justify the planning.

There’s no universal number, but there is a universal principle: you already carry substantial SpaceX exposure through your salary, your career trajectory, and your future grants. Holding a large share position on top of that is concentration risk, not loyalty. Most specialists help clients set a written ceiling — commonly a single-digit to low-double-digit percentage of net worth for any one stock — and build a multi-year path to get there. The right ceiling for you depends on your other assets, your timeline, and your risk capacity.

Datalign is free for consumers. Advisory firms in our network compete to be matched with clients, so you pay us nothing regardless of whether you ultimately work with the advisor we recommend. If you decide to engage with the advisor, their fees are disclosed transparently before you commit.

Datalign is an SEC-registered investment advisor that operates a matching platform. We don’t manage your money — we can connect you with a vetted fiduciary firm that does. Our fiduciary obligation is what allows us to evaluate advisors objectively and route you to the right fit.