Elon Musk’s $1 trillion Tesla payday may never fully materialize, but a merger with SpaceX could give him something he values more. Musk said on a SpaceX earnings call last month that both co
Elon Musk’s $1 trillion Tesla payday may never fully materialize, but a merger with SpaceX could give him something he values more.
Musk said on a SpaceX earnings call last month that both companies’ boards had formed special committees to discuss a potential merger.
As reported by Reuters, a deal would likely award Musk only a sliver of the up to $1 trillion in stock from Tesla’s 2025 pay package. SpaceX’s board could also restructure his compensation plan after a potential Tesla deal, experts told Reuters.
“My fundamental concern with regard to how much voting control I have in Tesla is: If I go ahead and build this enormous robot army, can I just be ousted at some point in the future?” Musk said on an October 2025 Tesla earnings call.
If SpaceX acquired Tesla at current sizes, Musk would own about 37% of the combined company but hold 56% of the voting power, Reuters quoted Barclays estimating it.
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This is because many of his SpaceX shares carry 10 times the voting rights of ordinary shares, while Tesla has no such dual-class share structure.
Under Tesla’s own plan, even a near eightfold jump in market value would leave him with about 29% voting power.
Tesla is valued at about $1.6 trillion. A merger would have to value it at $2 trillion for Musk to receive any stock, roughly $20 billion in shares at that level.
Charles Elson of the University of Delaware called the pay package “a distraction from the real story, which is complete control.”
Musk’s potential gains could increase further if the combined company’s market capitalization climbed to $2.5 trillion, $3 trillion or beyond following a deal. However, experts told Reuters that such a valuation premium would be unlikely.
Matthew Bloomfield, an associate professor of accounting at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, told Reuters, “You put a bunch of ambitious stuff in there and a lot of people say. Look at this big bet Elon Musk is putting on himself. In reality, the plan is mostly about getting a bunch of people hyped.”
A merger would also put both of Musk’s Bitcoin treasuries under one roof.
Tesla holds 11,509 BTC, while SpaceX disclosed 18,712 BTC in its IPO filing. Together, that is 30,221 BTC, worth about $2.32 billion at Bitcoin’s Oct. 31 price of $76,786.
Musk has argued that Bitcoin, unlike “fake” fiat currency, is backed by energy and cannot be debased like printed dollars.
His track record has been mixed, though. Musk called himself “a supporter of Bitcoin” in 2021, but Tesla sold 75% of its stake in 2022.
In 2021, he called himself “a supporter of Bitcoin" but months later, Tesla stopped accepting it as payment over environmental concerns.
With 56% of the vote, Musk would effectively have the final say over the merged company’s Bitcoin.
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