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(Sharecast News) - Shares in Tesla and SpaceX jumped on Wednesday, after Elon Musk confirmed the two businesses were exploring a possible blockbuster merger.
The world's richest man, who is chief executive of both companies, said the car manufacturer and space and technology specialist had formed specialist committees to consider a possible tie-up. "Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes. But at the end of the day, the shareholders have to be supportive of this." Musk has significant stakes in both businesses.
The combination would be the largest merger of all time. It would create a vast conglomerate centred on artificial intelligence - taking in electric cars, Starlink satellites and SpaceX's ambitions to build data centres on the moon - with a valuation of around $3trn.
Musk argued: "There is a lot of merit to combining the two companies as we are pretty much in the superintelligence singularity."
Musk, who also owns X, has long looked to deepen ties between his businesses. Earlier this year he launched joint venture Terafab, a semiconductor manufacturing plant in Texas that will make chips for driverless cars, robots and orbital AI data centres. Tesla and SpaceX have also worked on a "flying" car called Roadster that was unveiled last week, while Musk's AI chatbot Grok is provided for free in a number of Tesla models.
Tesla put on 2% and SpaceX 8% in after-hours trading on Wall Street.
Musk's comments came as SpaceX posted its first profit as a public company. Revenues for the three months to September end soared 161% to $14.58bn, after AI sales rocketed to $7.56bn, driven by renting out data-centre capacity to developers such as Anthropic. Starlink hit 13.6m subscribers, also ahead of forecasts.
Net income came in at $4.4bn compared to a net loss of $1.1bn a year previously. Consensus had been for profits closer to $1.6bn.
Tesla is due to publish third-quarter numbers later on Wednesday.
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