Elon Musk says Tesla-SpaceX merger being considered
Elon Musk has said he likes the idea of a merger of Tesla and SpaceX, two of his most notable companies, and it is under active consideration.
"Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes," Musk said during a call with financial analysts over the quarterly business results of SpaceX on Tuesday.
While Musk noted the certainty of such a merger should not be assumed, and it would need shareholders' support, he said special committees within both companies have 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," Musk added. "But I do think there is a lot of merit to merging and a lot to be gained."
With Tesla valued roughly $1.5 trillion and SpaceX valued at $2 trillion, a combination of the two companies would mark one of the largest mergers in history.
Shares of SpaceX rose 8% in after hours trading. Shares of Tesla, which reports its own quarterly results on Wednesday, rose 2% after being down slightly for weeks.
Over the last year, Musk has taken to bringing more of his various 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, software and more.
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 Tesla and of SpaceX.
Even commenting on the possibility of a merger between the two companies, Musk compared to "tap dancing through a minefield".
He added a merger would ultimately be decided by shareholders. At least 50% of Tesla's shareholders would need to approve the merger, 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 around $1 trillion.
While Tesla is known as an electric car company, Musk has lately been shifting resources there to work around robotics.
SpaceX quickly outstripped Tesla on the stock market in terms of value when it made its stock market debut.
The company, which builds space rockets and Starlink internet satellites, is now expanding into offering cloud compute capacity for other tech companies, like Anthropic and Google.
That line of business is now the most profitable part of SpaceX, bringing in $7.5bn according to the latest quarterly results. The company as a whole, however, has lost $1.1bn so far this year.
