Elon Musk said he likes the idea of merging Tesla and SpaceX, two of his most notable companies, and that it is under active consideration.
“Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes,” Musk said during a call with financial analysts over the quarterly business results of SpaceX on Tuesday.
While Musk noted that such a merger is not certain and would need shareholders’ support, he said special committees within both companies have been formed to examine the move.
“The special committees have not reached agreement on terms of any transaction, and there’s no guarantee that they will,” Musk added. “But I do think there is a lot of merit to merging and a lot to be gained.”
With Tesla valued at roughly $1.5 trillion and SpaceX at $2 trillion, combining the two companies would mark one of the largest mergers in history.
Over the last year, Musk has brought more of his companies under fewer banners. Before it went public earlier this year, SpaceX acquired xAI and X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, both of which Musk owned.
The recent launch of Terafab, a joint effort between Tesla and SpaceX to manufacture computer chips, was another signal that Musk sees his companies as potentially more effective when working together.
Musk said on Tuesday that a full merger between the two companies would make sense given the work each is doing on chips, artificial intelligence, software, and more.
Musk, who became the world’s first paper trillionaire after SpaceX’s stock market debut earlier this year, said he is not on either of the special committees considering the mega-merger.
He described himself as a “conflicted party” as Tesla and SpaceX’s chief executive.
Even commenting on a possible merger between the two companies, Musk compared it to “tap dancing through a minefield”.
He added that shareholders would ultimately decide on a merger. At least 50% of Tesla’s shareholders would need to approve the merger, which Musk described as “quite a high hurdle to achieve”.
Shareholders have supported Musk’s desires before. Last year, a majority of Tesla investors approved a compensation package for Musk valued at around $1 trillion.
While Tesla is known as an electric car company, Musk has recently shifted resources to focus on robotics.
SpaceX quickly outstripped Tesla in market value when it made its stock market debut.
The company, which builds space rockets and Starlink internet satellites, is now expanding into offering cloud compute capacity for other tech companies, like Anthropic and Google.
That line of business is now SpaceX’s most profitable, bringing in $7.5bn, according to the latest quarterly results.