As Elon Musk prepares to lead a second $2 billion company on the public market, a move that could put him in charge of two of the 10 most valuable businesses in the US, talk is building that Musk’s main goal is to merge organizations into one.
SpaceX is expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq in more than two weeks after achieving a private market valuation of $1.25 trillion earlier this year, when it merged with xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company. Tesla The 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 rolling the companies together, according to people familiar with the discussions who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the topic.
A current Tesla employee told CNBC that many employees at the electric car company have long expected such a transaction to finally happen and that the topic is being openly discussed internally. Another person close to the company said shared challenges related to energy and computer problems led to a general collaboration.
While a company that launches rockets based on contracts with the government may not seem very similar to an EV manufacturer, both businesses focus heavily on AI and the talent and computing resources needed to build AI infrastructure and services. More than three-quarters of SpaceX’s $10.1 billion in capital expenditures in the first quarter was tied to AI, and Tesla said in its latest earnings report that capex will triple this year, to $25 billion.
“Tesla has to implement powerful AI systems inside a moving vehicle with strict limits on power, cooling, latency, reliability and cost,” said Tomasz Tunguz, a former engineer who is now a venture capitalist at Theory Ventures. “SpaceX has to think about computing in orbit, where radiation, thermal cycling, mass transfer, power generation and heat rejection all become design constraints.”
Tunguz said the merger would likely attract the attention of tech enthusiasts in Silicon Valley, but acknowledged that a deal of that size would be “complex.”
Representatives for SpaceX and Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.
Musk, the world’s richest man, is expected to start a SpaceX roadshow next week, as he tries to sell Wall Street on the promises of the 24-year-old company that is already a giant. 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 a deal on the table to buy AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion.
“I think it’s proven by Elon itself,” said Tejpaul Bhatia, a longtime investor in SpaceX and CEO of Nebex, a startup that creates financial infrastructure for space-related transactions. “Parallel entrepreneurship seems to be working for him.”
A lot of overlap
Tesla and SpaceX have spent years pooling resources and sharing employees.
Musk sits on both boards, as does venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis, founder of DBL Partners. Musk’s brother Kimbal is currently on Tesla’s board and was a former director of SpaceX. 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, who is joining an apple ten years ago, and is known for playing an important role in solving the main problems of design.
In January, Tesla revealed that it had invested $2 billion in xAI. Those shares became equity 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 data centers managed and operated by xAI in the area around 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.
Previous deals between the companies have included Tesla selling solar products and auto parts to SpaceX, Tesla using SpaceX’s private jets, and Tesla relying on SpaceX to create a special alloy for its Cybertruck.
Sometimes suppliers consider Musk’s companies a 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 the SpaceX facilities in Hawthorne, California, US, on Monday, April 13, 2026.
Ethan Swope | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Legal experts say the SpaceX-Tesla merger is unlikely to cause antitrust issues but could raise concerns among shareholders in each of the two companies. Questions about which company will be the parent, how the stock exchange will take place, and who determines the appropriate price are among the most difficult challenges.
One thing that is almost certain is that Musk will not be worried about stepping down from the SpaceX board, as the CEO has 85% of the voting power. In the risk factors section of its prospectus, SpaceX notes that it is a “regulated company,” which allows exceptions when it comes to governance rules and means that Class A shareholders “will not have the same protections afforded to shareholders of subsidiaries from all corporate governance requirements” of Nasdaq.
The biggest beneficiary of a merger between SpaceX and Tesla would be Musk.
SpaceX has linked Musk’s compensation rewards to two key milestones: achieving a $7.5 trillion market cap and colonizing Mars with at least one million inhabitants. Meanwhile, Tesla shareholders approved a pay plan late last year that consists of 12 components, each payment tied to market and operating gains.
Ross Gerber, CEO of investment firm Gerber Kawasaki, previously told CNBC that the SpaceX and Tesla merger would allow Musk to fulfill his dream of running one giant company and that it would make it easier to raise and borrow the kinds of capital needed to compete in AI and the like. Google.
Bhatia said the combination would be largely due to an opportunity in SpaceX’s core market.
“I believe that the space market is huge right now,” said Bhatia. “And it’s going to be big after the SpaceX IPO.”
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Kimbal Musk’s current board seats.
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