Image source, Getty Images/Reuters By Osmond Chia Business reporter Published 21 October 2026, 05:13 BST Updated 2 hours ago Elon Musk has spent years building Tesla and SpaceX into a pair of trillion-dollar technology empires. Now, he is considering bringing them together .
Asked on Tuesday whether a merger would be a good idea, Musk was clear: "Yes."
The prospect is more than hypothetical. Musk said special committees have been formed to assess a potential deal, although he stressed that there is no guarantee a merger will happen and that nothing has been agreed.
With Tesla valued at roughly $1.5 trillion (£1.1 trillion) and SpaceX at $2 trillion, a combination of the two companies would mark the largest merger ever.
Any deal would also need shareholder backing. But Musk said he saw "a lot to be gained" in bringing the businesses together.
"In my opinion, 100%. It's just a question of when," says David Nicholson, chief technology advisor at market research firm The Futurum Group.
The unveiling of the Tesla Roadster last week - a futuristic electric car powered by SpaceX rocket thrusters - served as a "symbolic embodiment" hinting at the two Musk companies merging, Nicholson said.
Musk, chief executive of both SpaceX and Tesla, said bringing the firms together would be beneficial given the work each does around chips, artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology projects.
Specifically, the deal would combine Tesla's cars, robots and self-driving technology with SpaceX's rockets, data centres, satellites and telecommunications operations.
The move could be a step towards Musk's mission to build a self-sustaining city on Mars - a vision that has invited sceptics but also plenty of backers.
Over the past year, Musk has moved to consolidate his businesses, with SpaceX acquiring xAI and X, formerly Twitter, before going public this year.
Figure caption, Watch: Did Tesla really just unveil a flying car?
But the merger would ultimately be decided by shareholders, with half of Tesla's needed to back the deal, a threshold even Musk described as "quite a high hurdle".
Musk, as boss of both companies, cannot participate in shareholder discussions.
Even so, Musk, a key shareholder of Tesla, will likely get his way in the next few years, said investment analyst Dan Sheehan from Telos Wealth Advisors.
He believes shareholders will back the deal as the technology the companies develop complement each other, Sheehan said.
But the merger would mean that Tesla shareholders will likely hold a "smaller slice of a much larger and more complex business," he added.
"There's no real precedent for how a public company like Tesla gets priced in this," Sheehan said.
SpaceX shares rose 8% in after hours trading while shares of Tesla climbed by 2%.
Experts told the BBC that Tesla drivers are unlikely to see much drastic change in the near term, even if the two companies combine.
In fact, vehicles seem almost like "an afterthought", overshadowed by the potential to combine the Tesla and SpaceX's tech capabilities, Nicholson said.
Changes are already underway at Tesla. The carmaker said earlier this year that it would prioritise its best-selling Model Y and Model 3, shifting focus away from less popular models .
Tesla also started using a manufacturing plant in California to produce humanoid robots, known as Optimus.
Image source, NurPhoto via Getty Images Image caption, Tesla's vehicle line-up incl…