The noise around a Tesla-SpaceX mega-merger is growing louder.
In an interview with CNBC aired Friday, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said the two Elon Musk-led companies are working toward the same goals — and didn’t rule out a merger in the future.
“That might make Elon’s life a little easier, actually,” said Shotwell, who has been SpaceX president since 2008.
“There’s no question that there’s synergies between Tesla and SpaceX in our futures, definitely, there’s a convergence of a kind of what we’re all trying to accomplish in the future,” she said.
However, Shotwell added that she was focused on “keeping the lights on” at SpaceX and the company’s ambitious expansion plans, rather than any tie-up with Musk’s other major public company.
“I’m not focused on that part of the future, at least,” she said.
Musk has hinted at streamlining his sprawling business empire for years, and the possibility of Tesla and SpaceX merging has been increasingly floated by analysts and investors in recent weeks.
The two companies have shared employees and board members in the past and are already collaborating on a $55 billion “Terafab” chip-making moonshot that will build semiconductors for SpaceX’s AI satellites, as well as Tesla’s robotaxis and humanoid robots.
Tesla has also integrated xAI’s Grok AI model into its vehicles and made a $2 billion investment in Musk’s AI startup last year, which was converted into a stake in SpaceX when the company merged with xAI in February.
Wedbush Securities analyst and longtime Tesla bull Dan Ives wrote in a note on Thursday that he expected Tesla and SpaceX to merge into one company next year. He argued that combining the two trillion-dollar companies would be the “holy grail” that would allow Musk to capture a significant stake of the AI economy.
Shotwell’s comments came as SpaceX prepared to begin trading on Friday after raising $75 billion in the largest IPO in history. The rocket company was priced with a $1.75 trillion valuation, compared to Tesla’s market cap of $1.25 trillion.
SpaceX’s IPO means Musk is in the rare position of running two publicly listed companies.
The world’s richest man, who is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, as well as the founder of brain implant startup Neuralink and tunneling firm The Boring Company, has faced criticism from Tesla investors in the past for spending too little time at the EV giant.
Musk was awarded a gigantic pay package by Tesla shareholders last year that could be worth as much as $1 trillion if he meets a series of ambitious targets. The near-trillionaire also has a similar pay package at SpaceX, which hinges on the company establishing a human colony on Mars.
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