As Elon Musk prepares to lead a second trillion-dollar company into the public market, a move that will likely put him in charge of two of the 10 most valuable U.S. enterprises, chatter is building that Musk's ultimate goal is to combine the entities into one.
SpaceX is expected to start trading on the Nasdaq in just over two weeks after obtaining a private market valuation of $1.25 trillion earlier this year, when it merged with xAI, Musk's artificial intelligence company. Tesla's market cap currently sits at around $1.6 trillion.
The two companies already have a laundry list of shared resources, and Musk has discussed with colleagues the possibility of folding the companies together, according to people familiar with the talks who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the topic.
A current Tesla employee told CNBC that many workers at the electric vehicle company have long expected such a transaction to eventually take place and that the topic is openly discussed internally. Another person close to the company said that shared challenges tied to power and compute constraints have led to regular collaborations.
While a company launching rockets based on contracts with the government may not seem to have a lot in common with an EV manufacturer, both of the businesses are increasingly focused on AI and the talent and computing resources necessary to build AI infrastructure and services. More than three-quarters of SpaceX's $10.1 billion in capital expenditures in the first quarter were tied to AI, and Tesla said in its latest earnings report that capex will roughly triple this year, topping $25 billion.
"Tesla has to run powerful AI systems inside a moving vehicle with tight limits on power, cooling, latency, reliability and cost," said Tomasz Tunguz, a former engineer who's now a venture capitalist at Theory Ventures. "SpaceX has to think about compute in orbit, where radiation, thermal cycling, launch mass, power generation and heat rejection all become existential design constraints."
Tunguz said a potential merger has captured the attention of tech enthusiasts in Silicon Valley, but he concedes that a deal of that size would be "complex."
Representatives from SpaceX and Tesla didn't respond to requests for comment.
Musk, the world's richest person, is set to kick off SpaceX's roadshow next week, as he tries to sell Wall Street on the promises of the 24-year-old company that's already a big conglomerate. It consists of the reusable rocket business, the Starlink internet satellite service and xAI, which includes social media site X, formerly known as Twitter. SpaceX also has an agreement on the table to purchase AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion.
"I think it's been proven by Elon himself," said Tejpaul Bhatia, a longtime SpaceX investor and CEO of Nebex, a startup that's creating the financial infrastructure for space-related transactions. "Parallel entrepreneurship seems to work for him."
Hefty overlap
Tesla and SpaceX have spent years pooling resources and even sharing personnel.
Musk sits on both boards, as does his brother Kimbal and venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis, founder of DBL Partners. SpaceX board members Antonio Gracias and Steve Jurvetson previously served on Tesla's board. And Charles Kuehmann is vice president of materials engineering for Tesla and SpaceX, joining from Apple a decade ago, and is known for playing a key role in troubleshooting key design issues.
In January, Tesla revealed it had invested $2 billion in xAI. Those shares became holdings in SpaceX following that company's merger with xAI the following month.
SpaceX said in its prospectus that it bought $697 million worth of Tesla's Megapack battery energy storage systems in 2024 and 2025 to power the data centers owned and operated by xAI in the area surrounding the company's Colossus facilities in Memphis, Tennessee. SpaceX also said it spent $131 million on Tesla Cybertrucks in 2025, purchased at the manufacturer's suggested retail price.
Prior transactions between the companies included Tesla selling solar equipment and car parts to SpaceX, Tesla using SpaceX private jets, and Tesla leaning on SpaceX to develop a special alloy for its Cybertruck.
Suppliers sometimes view Musk's companies as one big customer. In 2024, Nvidia agreed to divert a $500 million order of GPUs from Tesla to xAI at Musk's request.
A Tesla Cybertruck drives past SpaceX facilities in Hawthorne, California, US, on Monday, April 13, 2026.
Ethan Swope | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Legal experts said that a SpaceX-Tesla merger likely wouldn't spark antitrust issues but it would potentially raise concerns among shareholders in each of the two companies. Questions around which company would be the parent, how a stock swap would take place, and who determines the appropriate price are among the thorny challenges.
One thing that's almost certain is Musk won't have to worry about pushback from SpaceX's board, given that the the CEO has 85% voting power. In the risk factors section of its prospectus, SpaceX notes that it's a "controlled company," which allows for exceptions when it comes to governance rules and means that Class A shareholders "will not have the same protections afforded to shareholders of companies that are subject to all of the corporate governance requirements" of the Nasdaq.
The biggest beneficiary of a tie-up between SpaceX and Tesla could be Musk.
SpaceX has linked Musk's compensation rewards to two milestones: achieving a $7.5 trillion market cap and colonizing Mars with at least 1 million inhabitants. Meanwhile, Tesla shareholders approved a pay plan late last year that consists of 12 tranches, with each payout tied to market cap gains and operational achievements.
Ross Gerber, CEO of investment firm Gerber Kawasaki, previously told CNBC that a merger of SpaceX and Tesla would allow Musk to fulfill a dream of running one big company and that it would make it easier to raise and borrow the kinds of cash needed to compete in AI with the likes of Google.
Bhatia said a combination would be more about recognizing the opportunity ahead in SpaceX's core market.
"I believe that the space market is huge right now," Bhatia said. "And it's just going to get bigger after the SpaceX IPO."
English (US) · 