Elon Musk Considers Merging SpaceX With xAI, as He Races to Beat Sam Altman to IPO

Elon Musk’s rocket company is reportedly in talks to merge SpaceX with some of his other businesses, ahead of a planned initial public offering on Wall Street later this year.

Several media outlets, including Bloomberg and Reuters, reported that SpaceX is considering a potential merger with Musk’s electric vehicle company, Tesla. Alternatively, it’s also weighing a deal with xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company that owns the chatbot Grok and the social media platform X.

There are already signs SpaceX is preparing for either scenario. Bloomberg reported that two legal entities established in Nevada include “merger sub†in their names and list SpaceX Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen as an officer. 

SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo.

A merger between SpaceX and either company could make sense. Musk has previously stated that one of SpaceX’s ambitions is to place data centers in space. Still, Bloomberg reports that investors appear particularly excited about the idea of a Tesla merger.

In contrast, a merger between the private company and xAI could come with its own more personal benefits. The deal could make xAI the first major AI startup to get a big, glitzy public debut. 

That timing here is key. The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI is eyeing an IPO as early as the fourth quarter of this year. Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot and coding agent, has also reportedly held talks with banks about going public, according to the newspaper. Neither company responded to a request for comment from Gizmodo.

For its part, SpaceX is reportedly targeting a mid-June public debut to coincide with a conjunction of Jupiter and Venus near Musk’s birthday.

If xAI were folded into that IPO, it would give public-market investors their first direct chance to buy into a major AI startup, essentially giving Musk the first access to a bigger pool of investors. Additionally, if there really is an AI bubble going on, it wouldn’t hurt to get investors on board before it bursts. 

There may also be a more personal motive behind a SpaceX–xAI merger. Musk has had a contentious relationship with OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, for years. Musk co-founded OpenAI but later left the company in 2018, reportedly due to disagreements over the direction of what was then a nonprofit organization.

Musk is now suing OpenAI and Microsoft for $134 billion, alleging “wrongful gains.†He claims he invested $38 million in OpenAI’s seed funding and made significant nonmonetary contributions under the belief that the company would remain a nonprofit.

OpenAI strongly disputes those claims. Earlier this month, the company published a blog post responding to Musk’s court filings, arguing that Musk had agreed that OpenAI would need to transition into a for-profit structure. According to OpenAI, Musk ultimately walked away after the company rejected his proposal to merge OpenAI into Tesla.

If Musk gets xAI to Wall Street first, he’d almost certainly frame it as a win over OpenAI.