SpaceX COO Says a Tesla Merger Could Happen. Here’s What We Know

SpaceX’s top operations executive just dropped a hint that a merger with Tesla could eventually be on the table.

Speaking with CNBC on Friday, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell said combining the two companies might make Elon Musk’s life a little easier, though she stopped short of saying anything was imminent. The comments came on the same day SpaceX made its Nasdaq debut, opening at a market valuation above $2 trillion and pushing Musk into the record books as the world’s first trillionaire.

“There’s a convergence of what we’re all trying to accomplish in the future, but right now I’m focused on keeping the lights on here,” Shotwell said. She added a merger “might make Elon’s life a little easier.”

A Tesla-SpaceX merger wouldn’t come out of nowhere. Musk has been on a consolidation run — earlier this year he folded xAI into SpaceX in a $1.25 trillion deal aimed at building out orbital data centres, and X, formerly Twitter, came along for the ride after Musk had already merged it with xAI back in 2025. The two companies already share engineering talent, and Tesla holds an indirect financial stake in SpaceX through previous xAI investments.

Shotwell was clear that her day-to-day focus right now is building rockets, expanding Starlink broadband, and managing flights to the International Space Station. But she acknowledged that M&A activity will keep happening, especially in AI. She pointed to SpaceX’s $60 billion option to acquire Cursor, the AI-assisted coding startup, as an example of where the company’s attention is heading.

Musk holds more than 80% of the voting power at SpaceX and sits on Tesla’s board, so if he ever decides to pull the trigger on a merger, there’s not much standing in his way.