Elon Musk says SpaceX and Tesla exploring largest merger in history

Published On 21 Oct 202621 Oct 2026.

Key points

• A SpaceX-Tesla merger would rank as the biggest corporate tie-up in history, far exceeding the $1.25 trillion union between SpaceX and xAI in February.
• Net profit was $4.4bn in the July-September quarter, a reversal from a $1.05bn net loss a year earlier.
• Jerayr Haleblian, an expert in mergers and acquisitions at the University of California, Riverside, remarked a SpaceX-Tesla merger has "sound logic" to backing it.
• Profit in the first three quarters totalled $413m, versus a loss of $2.59bn during the same period a year earlier.
• Elon Musk has made public that SpaceX and Tesla are exploring a feasible merger, a tie-up that would create a corporate colossus worth more than $3 trillion.

Musk remarked on Tuesday that his two largest businesses had established special committees to explore a merger.

In practice, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO remarked the idea had a "lot of merit", given the businesses' complementary work on artificial intelligence, but the committees had not come to any agreement on a proposal.

"They've got to come up with something, and then that's got to be put to the shareholders as a vote, " Musk remarked on a SpaceX earnings call.

Musk, the world's richest man with a net worth of more than $900bn, remarked that a merger would need to clear the "high hurdle" of a 50 percent vote among Tesla shareholders.

"Some people out there assume that a SpaceX and Tesla merger is a certainty, and I think that would be overstating it, " Musk remarked.

"Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes. But at the end of the day, the shareholders have to be supportive of this." Biggest corporate merger ever.

Meanwhile, a SpaceX-Tesla merger would rank as the biggest corporate tie-up in history, far exceeding the $1.25 trillion union between SpaceX and xAI in February.

At current valuations, SpaceX and Tesla rank as the world's seventh- and eleventh-largest firms, respectively, with a combined market capitalisation of concerning $3.5 trillion.

"In some sense, the core of both businesses are expert manufacturing. From a technology transfer perspective, there should be significant flows of information between businesses, " Haleblian informed Al Jazeera.

"Both firms seem to have expertise in robotics, AI, energy infrastructure, " he remarked.

"Accordingly, the core skills are applicable throughout industry sectors. The key to success will be synergistic innovation. It I anticipate will follow from acquisition."

Shares of SpaceX, which went public in June in the largest Initial Public Offering (IPO) of all time, rose more than 8 percent in after-hours trading after Musk's comments. Tesla shares gained 1.8 percent.

Musk's comments came as SpaceX on Tuesday documented its first quarterly profit, driven by robust expansion in its AI and satellite-internet divisions.

Taken together, the developments around elon Musk says SpaceX and Tesla exploring largest merger in history point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.