Elon Musk said he supports the idea of merging Tesla with SpaceX, a potential combination that would create a technology giant worth roughly $3.5 trillion and span artificial intelligence, space exploration and electric vehicle manufacturing. A combination at that scale would exceed any completed merger on record.

“Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes,” Musk said of the potential merger during a SpaceX third-quarter earnings call on Tuesday.

Musk said both SpaceX and Tesla have formed special committees of independent directors to discuss the idea at the request of shareholders. The chief executive of both companies cannot take part in the discussions because he is a conflicted party. Special committees of independent directors are a standard governance mechanism for evaluating transactions in which a top executive is conflicted, allowing negotiations to move forward without management involvement.

A merger would bring Tesla into the same corporate group as Grok developer SpaceXAI (formerly xAI) and social media platform X, which SpaceX acquired in February. The talks also come as SpaceX’s AI business became its largest revenue segment in the third quarter, underscoring how central artificial intelligence has become to Musk’s expanding technology empire.

“There’s a lot to be gained from cooperating on developing superintelligence software, chip design, the Terafab, obviously, robotics, mass to orbit with the Starmind constellation. Connectivity,” said Musk.

However, Musk tempered expectations over whether a merger will ultimately come through. “Some people out there assume that a SpaceX and Tesla merger is a certainty, and I think that would be overstating it,” he said, adding that the special committees have not reached agreement on the terms of any transaction and there is no guarantee that they will.

“At the end of the day, the shareholders have to be supportive of this and particularly on Tesla’s side we’ll need a 50% vote of all shares, not just those who vote, but of all shareholders. And that’s quite a high hurdle to try to achieve,” Musk said. Because the threshold counts all outstanding shares rather than only votes cast, unvoted or abstaining shares would effectively weigh against the proposal — a stricter standard than a simple majority of ballots. The committees’ progress toward agreed terms is the immediate marker to watch before any shareholder vote could take place.

SpaceX AI Revenue Jumps Ninefold in Q3

Musk’s comments followed SpaceX’s third-quarter earnings report, which showed revenue rising 161% year over year to $14.6 billion, driven largely by its “Super Intelligence” AI segment.

The Super Intelligence segment generated $7.6 billion in third-quarter revenue, an 830% increase from a year earlier, making it the company’s largest revenue contributor. SpaceX said the growth was driven by the activation of new cloud services agreements, the acquisition of software firm Cursor and increased adoption of its agentic AI model Grok across enterprise and consumer users.

Combined Bitcoin Holdings Would Exceed 30,000 BTC

A Tesla–SpaceX merger would also bring two sizable corporate Bitcoin treasuries under one roof. SpaceX reported holding 18,712 Bitcoin as of June 30, while Tesla held 11,509 BTC on the same date, according to their respective quarterly filings. Both figures come from mid-year disclosures, so the combined total reflects the June 30 snapshot rather than current holdings.

Based on those disclosures, a combined company would hold 30,221 BTC, which would make it the sixth-largest public Bitcoin treasury company, ahead of crypto exchange Bullish.