SpaceX posted $14.58 billion in third-quarter revenue on Tuesday — beating Wall Street's $12.86 billion estimate by nearly $2 billion — and then Elon Musk casually mentioned that both SpaceX and Tesla have formed special committees of independent directors to explore merging the two companies into one entity.
Combined market value at Tuesday's close: $3.5 trillion.
The announcement dropped during SpaceX's Q3 earnings call, four months after the company's June 2026 IPO. Musk told investors the committees were formed "at the request of shareholders" and emphasized that "these special committees consist of independent directors, and because I'm a conflicted party, I can't actually be in the discussions." He owns 45% of SpaceX with 82% voting power, and roughly 20% of Tesla. In a merged company, his stake would land around 33%.
The numbers behind the merger talk are staggering on their own. SpaceX reported 161% revenue growth for the quarter. Its artificial intelligence division — branded "Super Intelligence" — generated $7.56 billion in Q3 alone, a ninefold increase. Starlink pulled in another $5.25 billion. Net income hit $4.4 billion. SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen has the company targeting $100 billion in annualized revenue by year-end, though at Q3's pace the annualized figure sits at $58 billion, meaning December would need to deliver $8.3 billion — a 70% jump from current monthly figures.
Musk, characteristically, wasn't overselling it. "This is definitely the kind of question where I feel like I'm tap dancing through a minefield," he said of the merger discussions. "It's an odd kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can't be in the conversation." He added that "some people out there assume that a SpaceX and Tesla merger is a certainty, and I think that would be overstating it."
The corporate architecture already has the merger's fingerprints on it. Tesla has invested $2 billion directly into SpaceX. The two companies are jointly developing a Terafab chip plant. Board member Ira Ehrenpreis — founder of venture capital firm DBL Partners — chairs SpaceX's compensation and nominating committee and sits on two separate committees at Tesla. James Murdoch has served on Tesla's board since 2017 and previously invested in SpaceX. These aren't two companies that happen to share a CEO. They've been growing into each other for years.
The left's objection writes itself: too much power in one man's hands, monopoly concerns, something about democracy dying. This from the same political movement that cheered when the federal government partnered with social media companies to suppress speech it didn't like. Concentrated power is only a problem when it builds rockets and electric cars instead of censorship algorithms.
Tesla shareholder approval for any merger would require a majority of all outstanding shares — not just those voting, all of them. That's a high bar. And Tesla's annual shareholder proxy, filed Monday, contained no merger proposal. Whatever the special committees are discussing, it hasn't reached the formal stage yet. The market doesn't seem worried about the details. SpaceX stock jumped more than 5% after the earnings call, and Tesla ticked up 1% in after-hours trading.
Four months ago, SpaceX was a private company. Now it's publicly traded, printing money at 161% growth, and exploring a merger that would create the third-most-valuable company on Earth. The man the establishment spent years trying to destroy through lawsuits, advertiser boycotts, and regulatory harassment is building a $3.5 trillion empire.
The annual proxy didn't mention a merger. The stock went up anyway.