Musk confirms Tesla, SpaceX merger committees formed

Elon Musk confirmed on Tuesday that Tesla, SpaceX merger committees have been set up by both companies’ boards to explore combining the electric-car maker with the rocket and satellite group, telling investors on SpaceX’s third-quarter earnings call that the idea has real merit even as he cautioned against treating it as settled.

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) shares rose 1.73% to close at $380.45, within touching distance of their 20-day high of $387.11, as the comments circulated. The move extended a 20-day gain of 7.45%, though trading volume on the day ran slightly below the recent average, at 88% of the 20-day norm, according to consolidated exchange data cited by MarketWatch.

What Musk actually said

“Both SpaceX and Tesla have formed special committees to discuss this idea at the request of shareholders,” Musk said, according to Benzinga’s transcript of the call, adding that each committee is made up of independent directors. On the substance, he went further, telling the call “I do think there’s a lot of merit to combining the companies… There’s a lot to be gained from cooperating on developing superintelligence software,” as reported by Bloomberg Law.

He was careful, though, not to oversell the probability. “I think some people out there assume that a SpaceX and Tesla merger is a certainty, and I think that would be overstating it,” Musk said, per NBC News. He also disclosed that he is not a member of either committee, saying he’s excluded as a “conflicted party” under securities rules — a notable admission given he sits atop both companies as chief executive and majority influence.

Still several steps from a Tesla SpaceX merger

The gap between Tuesday’s remarks and an actual transaction is wide. As of the earnings call, neither company had filed anything with US regulators disclosing the committees — Musk’s spoken comments on the SpaceX investor webcast are the only record of this, as Drive Tesla Canada first noted. There is no 8-K, no merger agreement, no timetable.

The bar for shareholders is also unusually high. Musk indicated on the call that any combination would need approval from 50% of all outstanding Tesla shares — not simply a majority of those who turn up to vote — a threshold that has tripped up plenty of ambitious corporate plans before reaching the ballot.

Context matters here too. Bloomberg previously reported that SpaceX had weighed a Tesla merger once before, only to opt instead to acquire xAI, Musk’s artificial-intelligence venture. Tesla, for its part, invested roughly $2bn in January to acquire shares in SpaceXAI, an AI subsidiary of SpaceX — a transaction that already tied the two companies’ balance sheets together before Tuesday’s disclosure.

Scale mismatch, modest positioning shift

Any deal would also have to bridge a considerable valuation gap. SpaceX now trades publicly as Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ: SPCX) following its 2026 listing, with reporting from The Information putting its market value at roughly $2tn against Tesla’s approximately $1.5tn — the kind of disparity that typically shapes whether a deal is structured as a straight merger, a share exchange, or something more creative.

Positioning in the options and short-selling market showed only a modest shift. The share of Tesla’s daily trading volume attributable to short sales — bets that the stock will fall — ticked up to 0.483 on 20 October from 0.441 the prior session, according to FINRA data. That’s within the range the stock has traded in over the past fortnight, suggesting traders are adjusting around the news rather than racing to bet heavily against it.

Tesla’s own numbers give some sense of what a combined entity would be absorbing. The company reported revenue of $28.236bn and net income of $1.114bn for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, filed with the SEC — a business that would need to be reconciled with SpaceX’s own financials, which are not yet subject to the same quarterly disclosure regime Tesla shareholders are used to.

For now, the special committees exist only as a disclosure made verbally to investors on an earnings call, not as a matter of public record with regulators. Whether that changes — through an 8-K, a formal proxy process, or simply further commentary from Musk on Tesla’s own upcoming results — is the next marker worth watching.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any asset. Markets move quickly; figures are correct as sourced at the time of writing. Always do your own research before making financial decisions.