Even though neither company has confirmed any deal, talk of a merger between SpaceX and Tesla continues to gain ground. The speculation has gathered pace against the backdrop of newly released earnings from SpaceX, while Tesla prepares to report its own results on October 21.

A merger question climbs the upvote list

According to a Reuters article published on October 20, the question "When will SpaceX merge with Tesla?" had drawn 26 votes on SpaceX's investor platform and 128 votes on Tesla's. At SpaceX, the only question to receive more votes concerned Starship's lunar lander hardware, which had 38.

Investors also want to know whether Elon Musk's costly artificial intelligence ambitions will ultimately deliver satisfactory profits.

The two companies are already entangled

There is more than mere conjecture involved. In January 2026, Tesla put $2 billion into xAI. SpaceX subsequently folded xAI into its operations, and Cryptopolitan previously reported that the companies share numerous employees, equipment, and infrastructure.

SpaceX's second-quarter SEC filing further revealed that SpaceX purchased Tesla Megapacks worth $295 million during the quarter, underscoring the commercial ties between the two businesses. That overlap frames the debate: the question for investors is less whether the companies already share resources, and more whether those existing ties will be formalized into a single corporate structure.

Can Starlink and car margins fund the AI bill

SpaceX's earnings, released on October 20, showed positive indicators, including third-quarter revenue of $14.6 billion and net income of $4.4 billion. Its AI unit brought in $7.56 billion of revenue while racking up capital spending of $16.44 billion, underscoring the scale of its AI investment. That gap between revenue and spending lies at the heart of investors' questions about Musk's AI ambitions. For scale, the AI unit's quarterly capital outlay ran nearly four times the company's entire quarterly net income.

Tesla, on the other hand, sold 486,532 vehicles during the quarter, according to the company's production and deliveries release. As of October 19, Reuters reported that analysts expected adjusted earnings of 43 cents per share and negative cash flow of $4.92 billion. Tesla's October 21 report will show how closely actual results align with those expectations, which is why Reuters framed the earnings as a test of Musk's AI-spending ambitions.

Barclays' math favors Musk's control

According to Barclays, a merger could take place before Tesla's annual corporate meeting on December 3, an assessment that also takes into consideration SpaceX's purchases from Tesla.

The bank proposed a structure in which 100% of the merger would be conducted on a stock basis. Such an arrangement would give Musk 56% of the voting rights even if he holds only 37% of the merged corporation's shares.

During an October 20 Fox Business interview, Constellation Research analyst R. "Ray" Wang suggested that Tesla shareholders would receive 0.7 SpaceX shares for each share.

"He gets the majority of the voting rights with less of the stock," Wang explained.

Stuart Varney asked: "That seems to be very much in Elon Musk's favor, doesn't it?"

"Oh, it is," Wang replied.

A primary issue for minority shareholders is whether they would retain any meaningful say in a merged enterprise in which Musk holds the majority of voting power. Barclays' assessment also gives the merger talk a concrete timeline to watch: a possible agreement before the December 3 meeting, with Tesla's results on October 21 the next scheduled milestone in between.

What a merger could mean for competition

PwC's 2026 outlook highlights how companies are securing AI infrastructure, computing power, and distribution through acquisitions and partnerships. However, a European Commission study found that the mergers it reviewed tended to reduce innovation while increasing markups. Its findings do not directly predict the outcome of a cross-industry combination. Against that backdrop, a formal SpaceX-Tesla combination would fit the pattern PwC describes, with the distinguishing feature that the two sides have already been converging operationally since Tesla's January investment in xAI.

For both companies, the bigger question remains whether operational efficiencies would justify the costs and the concentration of control.