Elon Musk said Tuesday he is actively considering merging Tesla and SpaceX, his two largest companies, telling analysts on a call to discuss SpaceX's latest results that 'do I think it would be a good idea? Yes,' while cautioning that a deal is far from certain.
Musk said special committees had been formed within both companies to examine the move, but that 'the special committees have not reached agreement on terms of any transaction and there's no guarantee that they will.' With Tesla valued at roughly $1.5 trillion and SpaceX at $2 trillion, a combination would rank among the largest mergers in corporate history.
A deal Musk says he can't steer
Musk, who became the world's first paper trillionaire after SpaceX's own stock market debut earlier this year, said he is deliberately excluded from both special committees given his position as chief executive of both companies. He described even discussing the possibility as 'tap dancing through a minefield,' adding that any merger would ultimately need approval from shareholders — including at least 50% of Tesla's.
The announcement followed a Roadster unveiling at a SpaceX facility on 15 October, in which Tesla showed off a prototype using cold-gas thrusters to hop over obstacles mid-air. Wall Street read the demo, which offered no pricing and promised production no earlier than 2028, largely as a vehicle — literally and figuratively — for building the case to investors for integrating the two companies more closely. Barclays analyst Dan Levy has suggested a formal announcement could come before Tesla's annual shareholder meeting, expected on or before 6 December.
Why now
SpaceX's own numbers may be adding urgency: the company's cloud-compute business, which rents capacity to AI companies including Anthropic and Google, generated $7.5 billion in revenue over the past three months, up from just $813 million a year earlier, dwarfing the $5.2 billion generated by Starlink in the same period. That diversification has fed speculation that Musk sees a combined Tesla-SpaceX as an AI-and-robotics conglomerate play rather than simply a car-and-rocket company.
I do think there is a lot of merit to merging and a lot to be gained.
Elon Musk, on a call with analysts
What happens next
Starlink's government business is also facing its own scrutiny, with claims that Ukraine's access to the network was deliberately slowed amid the war with Russia — allegations both Trump and Musk have denied, though Musk has suggested the US government itself may have been behind any restrictions. Analysts expect the special committees to take months to reach any formal terms, with a shareholder vote, if it happens at all, unlikely before next year.