Tesla shares jumped 4% in minutes during Thursday’s after-hours session after Bloomberg reported the company would merge with SpaceX, both led by Elon Musk.
A Reuters report published hours earlier said the merger would be between xAI and SpaceX, with CEO Elon Musk apparently hinting at that possibility.
Musk appeared to confirm the long-term ambitions on X, replying “Yeah” to a post that said “SpaceX will be the Dyson Swarm company. We are locked in for Kardashev 2” in reaction to the Reuters report.
Both reports cited people familiar with the matter and two legal entities registered in Nevada on January 21, each containing “merger sub” in its name and SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen as an executive.
Tesla Earnings
The news also come just a day after Tesla disclosed its fourth quarter financial results, revealing an investment of “approximately $2 billion” in xAI.
The company is shifting its focus from EV production to autonomous technology, as several investors have noted, valuing Tesla based on upcoming projects such as the Robotaxi service and the Optimus humanoid robot.
Tesla announced this Wednesday that it will end production of its flagship Model S and Model X vehicles and retool its production lines to manufacture the humanoid robot.
The company’s stock closed 3.5% down at $416.52 on Thursday, before the reports led its shares to jump after-hours.
As of press time, the company is trading nearly 2.2% higher on Friday’s pre-market session.
Since reaching its all-time high of $498.83 on December 22, Tesla‘s shares dropped 16.5%.
SpaceX IPO
Earlier this week, the Financial Times reported that SpaceX, the most-valuable privately held company in the world, was planning to go public this year.
According to the report, the company worth $800 billion according to a recent private share sale would have an IPO with a valuation above $1 trillion.
For comparison, the Wall Street Journal valued xAI at $230 billion last November, while Tesla‘s market cap, as of Thursday, stood at nearly $1.4 trillion.
US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth visited SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas in mid-January, hosted by CEO Elon Musk.
There, he highlighted the space company’s efforts driving technological innovation in the US and emphasized the importance of using advanced AI for military applications.
Speaking at the facility, Hegseth announced that sister company’s Grok AI will be deployed across Pentagon networks.
Abundance Mission
Earlier this month, Musk was a guest on the Moonshots podcast, hosted by Peter Diamandis and Dave Blundin, where he talked about Tesla‘s mission of building “a world of amazing abundance.”
Blundin suggested that while Tesla and SpaceX — both run by Musk — were initially “completely separate,” they now “actually interact because AI ties everything together.”
Musk agreed, using a Superman analogy to explain it.
“If you apply automotive manufacturing technology to satellites and rockets, it’s like being Superman,” he said. “Then if you take advanced material science from rockets and you apply that to the automotive industry, you get Superman again.”
“That came from planet Krypton backing Planet Krypton. This is normal,” Tesla‘s CEO explained, referring to the home planet of the character.
A few weeks later, speaking with Larry Fink at the World Economic Forum, Musk said the goal of his companies — including Tesla, SpaceX, xAI — is “to maximize the future of civilization.”
