Musk Says Tesla-SpaceX Merger Is No Sure Thing as Directors Weigh Tie-Up

Elon Musk says Tesla and SpaceX are studying a possible merger, but he wants one thing clear: it's not a done deal. The CEO of both companies said Tuesday that independent directors have set up special committees to examine a combination at shareholders' request. He supports the idea, yet the committees haven't agreed on terms — and without those, there's no way to calculate what investors would actually get. Musk's own verdict on the certainty talk: assuming a merger is inevitable would be overstating it.

The structure is where the stakes live. How each company is valued, what shareholders receive, and how much ownership and voting power they keep all flow from terms nobody has settled. Musk flagged AI software, chip design, robotics and space-based computing as areas where the two could gain from teaming up — but he stopped short of pointing to agreed savings or extra earnings. He also called a deal a good idea while saying his conflict of interest keeps him out of the committees' talks, describing the whole discussion as tap dancing through a minefield.

Votes could prove a real hurdle. Musk said a deal would need support from a majority of all Tesla shares, not just a majority of votes cast — a bar he called quite high. That makes turnout matter: shares that sit out don't help a proposal cross the line. Musk holds roughly 20 per cent of Tesla. At SpaceX, he owned 48.4 per cent as of June 30 and controlled more than 82 per cent of voting power through super-voting shares, per the regulatory filing cited in the report. Those numbers don't settle what his stake or control would look like post-merger — that depends on the deal's terms and the rights attached to its shares.

Meanwhile, SpaceX's latest quarter shows just how big the prize has become. Net income hit $4.4 billion, reversing a $1.1 billion loss a year earlier, as revenue jumped 161 per cent to $14.6 billion. Its AI division, now called Super Intelligence, pulled in $7.6 billion — more than nine times the year-earlier figure — and overtook Starlink as the largest business by sales. Starlink still brought home the most profit, with revenue up 69 per cent to $5.2 billion and 13.6 million consumer subscribers, though average monthly revenue per consumer slipped to $69 from $83.

That growth comes with a bill. SpaceX poured $19.6 billion into capital investment during the quarter, $16.4 billion of it on AI, pushing nine-month spending to $48 billion. Computing capacity climbed to 1.7 gigawatts from 0.6 a year earlier, with roughly 2.5 to 3 gigawatts expected by year-end. Musk said he's fairly confident the company can bring another 10 gigawatts online in 2027, while naming power, cooling and electrical equipment as somewhat of a limiting factor. Investors should read the $4.4 billion profit for what it is: earnings under accounting rules, not cash sitting ready to fund a combined group.