There was a time when Elon Musk said a merger between Tesla and SpaceX would never happen, calling the ties between the two companies “really quite tenuous.” Now that possibility is less a question of if and more a question of when, according to Bloomberg.
So what changed? AI, of course.
Both companies have pivoted hard toward artificial intelligence. Tesla is pushing into autonomous driving and humanoid robots. SpaceX acquired Musk’s AI developer xAI and has ambitions to put data centers in space. The two are already building a shared chip fabrication plant in Texas and have teamed up on “Macrohard” — a play on Microsoft — to build an entire software company using AI agents instead of human developers.
The numbers are staggering. SpaceX is valued at around $2.1 trillion, Tesla at $1.6 trillion. A combined entity would be worth roughly $4 trillion — and would be the largest corporate merger in history, surpassing Vodafone’s $200 billion Mannesmann deal in 2000. Prediction market platform Kalshi puts the odds of a deal before 2028 at 62%.
But there are hurdles, including conflict of interest, Tesla’s deteriorating cash flow and the risk that a conglomerate is worth less than its parts. Still, longtime investors have already made up their minds: A merger is just a matter of time.
There was a time when Elon Musk said a merger between Tesla and SpaceX would never happen, calling the ties between the two companies “really quite tenuous.” Now that possibility is less a question of if and more a question of when, according to Bloomberg.
So what changed? AI, of course.
Both companies have pivoted hard toward artificial intelligence. Tesla is pushing into autonomous driving and humanoid robots. SpaceX acquired Musk’s AI developer xAI and has ambitions to put data centers in space. The two are already building a shared chip fabrication plant in Texas and have teamed up on “Macrohard” — a play on Microsoft — to build an entire software company using AI agents instead of human developers.
The numbers are staggering. SpaceX is valued at around $2.1 trillion, Tesla at $1.6 trillion. A combined entity would be worth roughly $4 trillion — and would be the largest corporate merger in history, surpassing Vodafone’s $200 billion Mannesmann deal in 2000. Prediction market platform Kalshi puts the odds of a deal before 2028 at 62%.
But there are hurdles, including conflict of interest, Tesla’s deteriorating cash flow and the risk that a conglomerate is worth less than its parts. Still, longtime investors have already made up their minds: A merger is just a matter of time.