The $3.5T Bailout: Elon's Plan To Merge Tesla And SpaceX

Elon Musk has officially confirmed that special committees at both Tesla and SpaceX are evaluating a potential merger between the two companies, and prediction markets now put the odds of a deal before 2028 at 81%. As Scott Galloway put it: "The bride, the groom, and the officiant are the same person." The merger would create a combined entity worth roughly $3.5 trillion — larger than the GDP of France — but the two companies are in radically different positions. SpaceX revenue surged 161% year over year with a 60% EBITDA margin. Tesla's revenue was flat, operating income dropped 56%, margins fell to 2.6%, and deliveries declined 2%.

The "as soon as" strategy

Galloway described Musk as "the genius of as soon as." Tesla has been trading at a P/E of roughly 300 versus an auto industry average of 17, sustained entirely on future promises: better EVs, then autonomous driving, then humanoid robots. Each promise buys time until the next one is needed. "The moment the performance begins to catch up to the promise, he shoves it in another vehicle with more promise," Galloway said. The pattern is familiar: Musk stuffed failing SolarCity into Tesla, then folded Twitter into xAI, which then got absorbed into SpaceX. "When one of his kids are failing, he makes another family adopt it."