Elon Musk confirms he is considering merging Tesla and SpaceX
Elon Musk has said he is actively considering merging Tesla and SpaceX, his two biggest companies.
"Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes," Musk said during a call with financial analysts to discuss SpaceX's latest results on Tuesday.
While Musk noted it could not be assumed a merger will go ahead, and it would need shareholders' support, he said special committees within both companies had been formed to examine the move.
"The special committees have not reached agreement on terms of any transaction and there's no guarantee that they will," he said. "But I do think there is a lot of merit to merging and a lot to be gained."
With Tesla valued at roughly $1.5 trillion and SpaceX at $2 trillion, a combination of the two companies would mark one of the largest mergers in history.
SpaceX builds space rockets as well as Starlink internet satellites and provides a secured satellite network for governments, including the US, through its Starshield business.
That part of the business is currently facing scrutiny over claims Ukraine's access to the network has been limited, leaving it vulnerable to deadly strikes by Russia.
US President Donald Trump has denied either he or Musk ordered the slowdown. Musk himself suggested the US government might have been behind the restrictions.
Starlink's total revenue rose to $5.2bn in the three months to 30 September from $3bn in the same period last year. It is dwarfed by SpaceX's expansion into offering cloud compute capacity for other tech companies, such as Anthropic and Google.
The business generated revenues of $7.5bn over the three months, up from $813m last year.
'Tap dancing through a minefield'
Musk, who became the world's first paper trillionaire after the SpaceX stock market debut earlier this year, said he is not included in either of the special committees considering the mega-merger.
He described himself as a "conflicted party" as the chief executive of both Tesla and SpaceX.
Even commenting on the possibility of combining the two companies, Musk compared it to "tap dancing through a minefield".
A merger would ultimately be decided by shareholders, he added. At least 50% of Tesla's shareholders would need to approve a combination, which Musk described as "quite a high hurdle to achieve".
Shareholders have supported Musk's desires before. Last year, a majority of investors in Tesla approved a compensation package for Musk valued at around $1tn.
While Tesla is known as an electric car company, Musk has lately been shifting resources there to work around robotics.
SpaceX, with its growing focus on AI infrastructure, quickly outstripped Tesla on the stock market in terms of value when it made its market debut in June.
SpaceX as a whole is not profitable despite revenue jumping to $27bn from $13.7bn over the first nine months of the year.
Over that same period it lost $1.1bn.
Following Musk's comments, SpaceX's share price rose 8% in after-hours trading. Shares in Tesla, which reports its own quarterly results on Wednesday, rose by 2%.
Over the last year, Musk has taken to bringing more of his companies under fewer banners. Before it went public earlier this year, SpaceX acquired xAI and X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, both of which Musk owned.
The recent launch of Terafab, a combined effort to manufacture computer chips between Tesla and SpaceX, was another signal that Musk sees his companies as potentially more effective when working together.
Musk said on Tuesday a full merger between the two companies would make sense for the work each is doing around chips, artificial intelligence and software.
