Barclays Says a Tesla-SpaceX Merger Could Be Announced Before Tesla's Annual Meeting in Early December
An announcement could come within weeks
Barclays says a merger of Tesla and SpaceX could be announced before Tesla's annual meeting in early December, which the bank notes must be held by December 6.
To be clear, this is analyst speculation, not an announced deal. Neither company has confirmed any transaction. Barclays itself says that if an announcement does not come before the meeting, it still expects one within the next 6 to 12 months, with a deal potentially closing during the Trump administration.
The structure Barclays lays out
Barclays says the most likely structure is SpaceX acquiring Tesla in an all-stock deal, with Tesla shareholders receiving about 0.7 SpaceX shares for each Tesla share, plus a likely premium.
The math follows the market caps: SpaceX at roughly $2.1 trillion and Tesla at roughly $1.5 trillion. Barclays analyst Dan Levy sees SpaceX as the natural acquirer because its dual-class share structure lets Elon Musk keep control. Musk holds about 48 percent of SpaceX with roughly 82 percent of the voting power, and Barclays calculates he would own about 37 percent of the combined company with roughly 56 percent of the voting power.
Why combine them
The pitch is vertical integration. Barclays points to Tesla's Robotaxi and Optimus robots on the physical AI side, SpaceX's Grok and Macrohard AI efforts on the software side, and the joint Terafab chip project in between. One company would remove the separate board processes that currently slow joint decisions, and Barclays says the true value would be in vertical integration rather than financial synergies.
Musk has fed the speculation himself. Asked about a combination on Tesla's second-quarter earnings call, he pointed to the growing overlap between the two companies, Terafab in particular, and at the All-In Summit last month he noted how extensive the collaboration between them already is.
Any deal would still need both boards, both sets of shareholders, and antitrust regulators to sign off, and Barclays flags shareholder approval as the main hurdle. The bank maintains an Equal Weight rating on Tesla with a $370 price target.
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Options market and stocks to watch
Merger speculation is already moving both stocks. TSLA fell about 3 percent to $355.80 on Thursday and is down roughly 18 percent this year, while SPCX dropped about 7 percent the same day.
If an exchange ratio near 0.7 starts to firm up, expect merger arbitrage positioning to tie the two stocks together, with heavy call and put flow in TSLA into the December meeting and headline-driven volatility in SPCX, which trades above its $135 IPO price but well below its highs near $226. Watch both options chains as December approaches, and follow deal headlines on the Unusual Whales news feed.
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