Elon Musk says he is weighing a merger of Tesla and SpaceX

Elon Musk told analysts on a call about SpaceX’s latest results on Tuesday that he is actively exploring the possibility of combining his two flagship companies. “Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes,” he said.

Musk cautioned that a merger is not certain and would require the backing of shareholders. He said special committees have been set up at both firms to look into the idea. “The special committees have not reached agreement on terms of any transaction and there’s no guarantee that they will,” he explained. “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 (£1.1 trillion) and SpaceX at about $2 trillion, a union would rank among the biggest mergers ever attempted.

SpaceX, which builds rockets and the Starlink internet satellite constellation, also runs the Starshield program that offers a secure satellite network to governments, including the United States. That segment is under scrutiny after claims that Ukraine’s access to the network was limited, leaving it vulnerable to Russian attacks. President Donald Trump has denied that he or Musk ordered any slowdown, and Musk has hinted that the U.S. government may have been behind the restrictions.

Starlink’s revenue grew to $5.2 billion in the three months ending 30 September, up from $3 billion a year earlier. The broader SpaceX business, which now provides cloud‑compute capacity to firms such as Anthropic and Google, generated $7.5 billion in the same period, a sharp rise from $813 million the previous year.

Musk, who became the world’s first paper trillionaire after SpaceX’s stock market debut earlier this year, said he is not a member of either special committee, describing himself as a “conflicted party” in his role as chief executive of both companies. He likened the prospect of a merger to “tap dancing through a minefield.”

Any merger would need approval from at least half of Tesla’s shareholders, a hurdle Musk called “quite a high hurdle to achieve.” Shareholders have backed his initiatives before; last year a majority of Tesla investors approved a compensation package for Musk valued at about $1 trillion.

While Tesla is best known for electric cars, Musk has recently been channeling resources toward robotics. SpaceX, with its expanding focus on artificial‑intelligence infrastructure, overtook Tesla in market value after its June debut.

Despite a revenue surge to $27 billion from $13.7 billion in the first nine months of the year, SpaceX remains unprofitable overall, posting a $1.1 billion loss for that period but reporting a $4.4 billion profit in the most recent quarter.

Following Musk’s comments, SpaceX shares jumped 8 percent in after‑hours trading, while Tesla stock rose 2 percent ahead of its quarterly earnings report scheduled for Wednesday.

In recent months Musk has been consolidating his enterprises. Before SpaceX went public, it acquired xAI and X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. The launch of Terafab, a joint effort between Tesla and SpaceX to produce computer chips, underscores his view that the companies could be more effective together. Musk said a full merger would make sense for work on chips, artificial intelligence and software.