SpaceX-Tesla merger could give Musk control without the $1T payday

Elon Musk may be done chasing trillion-dollar paydays. A SpaceX-Tesla merger could hand him what he actually wants — ironclad voting control — without hitting a single one of those flashy milestones, according to a Reuters review of both pay plans and six executive-compensation experts. Musk said on a SpaceX earnings call last month that both boards have already formed special committees to explore a deal. Tesla, SpaceX and Musk didn't comment.

The trick sits in how SpaceX's plan is built. Musk got the voting power on his SpaceX awards upfront — the economic rights only unlock if he hits goals, but the votes count right away. That structure alone pushed him to 85 per cent control of SpaceX, no Mars colony required. A merger, then, is a shortcut: SpaceX's super-voting shares could carry him straight to the Tesla control he's been openly craving.

Tesla's plan works in reverse. Shareholders approved a package worth up to $1 trillion in stock last year, but it pays out only as Musk clears market-cap and operational targets, and he hasn't cleared any of them yet. Even a clean sweep — including growing Tesla's market cap nearly eightfold — would leave him with roughly 29 per cent of the voting power, per board documents from last year. On Tesla's October 2025 earnings call, Musk framed it bluntly: if he builds an enormous robot army, could he just be ousted later?

Barclays analysts ran the math on a SpaceX takeover of Tesla. At current sizes, Musk would own about 37 per cent of the combined company while holding 56 per cent of the votes, thanks to SpaceX share classes that carry 10 times the voting rights of ordinary stock. Tesla has no such class. The payout math is thinner: Tesla's market cap is about $1.6 trillion, and it would need to reach $2 trillion in connection with the merger before Musk collects anything. That would issue him $20 billion in Tesla shares at a $2 trillion valuation — worth less in practice, since the plan only counts growth after September 2025.

Would the Mars talk survive a deal? The SpaceX board could rewrite Musk's plan entirely, the experts said, possibly lifting market-cap and earnings targets to fit a bigger combined company. SpaceX did something similar when it absorbed xAI and took over Musk's compensation plan there. The SpaceX shares in the plan would be worth $719 billion at the highest market-cap target, per research firm Equilar — but only if Mars and the space data centers actually happen.

The experts weren't subtle about what the spectacle is for. Charles Elson of the University of Delaware called the plan a distraction from the real story: complete control. Wharton's Matthew Bloomfield called the SpaceX package, assembled right before the IPO, a marketing document designed to get people hyped. USC's Kevin Murphy expects the boards to leave the plans in place and just adjust the numbers — and doubts Musk wants an easy win. As Murphy put it, he's an all-or-nothing kind of guy.