SpaceX director Donald Harrison steps down as Tesla merger talk swirls

Donald Harrison told SpaceX on Nov. 4 that he's done with the boardroom. The rocket, satellite and AI giant disclosed the resignation in a filing dropped after markets closed on Friday, and said flatly that no dispute with the company drove him out. He'd logged more than a decade as an independent director. The timing is eyebrow-raising. Harrison handed in his notice the day after the US midterm election, and the exit lands right as SpaceX and Tesla quietly explore an all-in-one future.

His seat came with strings attached — Google's. Harrison joined the board in 2015 as part of Google's investment in Elon Musk's rocket business. He's still at Alphabet, where he runs corporate partnerships and development, and SpaceX has long counted him among its independent directors alongside Ira Ehrenpreis, Roelof Botha, Luke Nosek, Steve Jurvetson and Randy Glein.

Musk said last month that SpaceX and Tesla had each stood up special committees of independent directors to chew on a possible merger. He hasn't named who's sitting on them. According to Bloomberg, there's a push to unveil a transaction in the first half of next year — and to get it across the line while the current administration is still in office.

The Alphabet thread doesn't end with Harrison. Alphabet remains one of SpaceX's biggest backers and holds the second largest stake after Musk himself. Last week the company said its results took a hit from a decline in SpaceX's share value last quarter — a reminder that a private rocket company's paper valuation can ripple into a public tech giant's numbers.

Then there's the awkward part: Google and SpaceX are building rival AI systems. Gemini and Grok are squaring off against Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's ChatGPT, even as the two companies stay tangled up on the cap table. For now, the story sits at the intersection of governance shuffles, capital ties and merger chatter — all things that can surface in portfolios tied to these names.