As Elon Musk prepares to lead a second trillion-dollar company to the public market, a move that would potentially put him in charge of two of the 10 most valuable U.S. enterprises, there is talk that Musk’s ultimate goal is to combine the entities into one.
SpaceX is expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq in just two weeks after achieving a private market valuation of $1.25 trillion earlier this year when it merged with Musk’s artificial intelligence company XAI. Tesla’s The market cap is currently around $1.6 trillion.
The two companies already have a long list of shared resources, and Musk has discussed the possibility of linking the companies together with colleagues, according to people familiar with the conversations who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.
A current Tesla employee told CNBC that many employees at the electric vehicle company have long expected such a transaction to eventually happen and have discussed the topic openly internally. Another person close to the company said common challenges related to power and computing constraints have led to regular collaboration.
While there may not seem to be much in common between a rocket launching company and an EV manufacturer based on contracts with the government, both businesses are increasingly focused 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 capital spending in the first quarter was related to AI, and Tesla said in its latest earnings report that capital spending will nearly triple this year, to more than $25 billion.
“Tesla will have to run powerful AI systems inside a moving vehicle with tight limits on power, cooling, latency, reliability and cost,” said Tomasz Tunguz, a former engineer who is now a venture capitalist at Theory Ventures. “SpaceX will have to think about calculations in orbit, where radiation, thermal cycling, launch mass, power generation and heat rejection all become existential design constraints.”
Tunguz said the potential merger has attracted the attention of tech enthusiasts in Silicon Valley, but he believes 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 set to kick off a SpaceX road show next week as he tries to sell Wall Street on the promises of the 24-year-old company, which is already a huge conglomerate. This includes the reusable rocket business, the Starlink Internet satellite service and XAI, which includes social media site X, formerly known as Twitter. SpaceX also has an agreement to buy AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion.
“I think this has been proven by Elon itself,” said Tejpaul Bhatia, a longtime SpaceX investor and CEO of Nabex, which is building the financial infrastructure for space-related transactions. “Parallel entrepreneurship seems to be working for him.”
heavy overlap
Tesla and SpaceX have spent years pooling resources Sharing personnel.
Musk sits on both boards, as do his brother Kimbal and venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis, founder of DBL Partners. SpaceX board members Antonio Gracias and Steve Jurvetson previously served on Tesla’s board. and Charles Kuhman, vice president of materials engineering for Tesla and SpaceX, who is joining Apple a decade ago, and is known to have played a key role in troubleshooting major design problems.
In January, Tesla revealed it had invested $2 billion in xAI. Those shares became holdings in SpaceX after the company merged with XAI the following month.
SpaceX said in its catalog It purchased Tesla’s Megapack battery energy storage system worth $697 million in 2024 and 2025 to power xAI’s owned-and-operated data centers 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.
Earlier transactions between the companies included Tesla selling solar equipment and car parts to SpaceX, Tesla using SpaceX’s private jet, and Tesla leaning on SpaceX to develop a special alloy for its Cybertruck.
Suppliers sometimes view Musk’s companies as a major customer. In 2024, Nvidia agreed to divert a $500 million GPU order from Tesla to xAI at Musk’s request.
A Tesla Cybertruck drives past SpaceX facilities in Hawthorne, California, US, on Monday, April 13, 2026.
Ethan Swope | Bloomberg | getty images
Legal experts said the SpaceX-Tesla merger would not raise antitrust issues, but it would likely raise concerns among shareholders of each of the two companies. Questions like which company will be the parent company, how the stock exchange will happen and who will determine the fair value are among the thorny challenges.
One thing that’s almost certain is that Musk won’t have to worry about pushback from SpaceX’s board, given that the CEO holds 85% of the voting power. In the risk factors section of its prospectus, SpaceX notes that it is a “controlled company”, which allows exceptions when it comes to governance rules and means Class A shareholders “will not have the same protections given to shareholders of companies that are subject to all of Nasdaq’s corporate governance requirements”.
Musk could be the biggest beneficiary of the alliance between SpaceX and Tesla.
SpaceX has tied Musk’s compensation awards to two milestones: achieving a $7.5 trillion market cap and colonizing Mars with at least 1 million inhabitants. Meanwhile, Tesla shareholders approved a pay plan late last year consisting of 12 tranches, with each payment tied to market cap gains and operating achievements.
Ross Gerber, CEO of investment firm Gerber Kawasaki, previously told CNBC that the merger of SpaceX and Tesla would allow Musk to fulfill his dream of running a bigger company and would make it easier to raise the cash and borrowing needed to compete in AI. Google.
Bhatia said the combination will be about recognizing further opportunity in SpaceX’s core market.
“I believe the space market is huge right now,” Bhatia said. “And it’s going to be even bigger after the SpaceX IPO.”
Watch: Bet on Musk’s space ambitions
