4.
Accomplish a ludicrous valuation above all else?
Why? Well, as Cory Doctorow said at the talk I attended earlier this week, they do this for the same reason a dog licks his balls: because they can and no one will stop them.
The only thing I can think that makes any sense at all is Teslas coming with Starlink terminals built in. That seems like a stretch though.
If we wants control and SpaceX acquires Tesla, then I think it drops out until there is profitability.
Nice!
Classic Elon. This is the same thing that he did to rescue a failing Solar City by making it part of Tesla.
It takes a lot to get where Elon is. But it also takes a willingness to double down over and over again on big bets. And he himself will be the first to admit that the most likely outcome of his strategy was bankruptcy.
Is any more proof needed that if you ride the coat tails of real engineers and have a propensity for screwing other people over that that is what success really is for a lot of people in business?
Just look to the number of huge companies with founding members or integral early members being forced out just as things are getting good ($$$).
I read something that put it into perspective for me. Musk's current net worth is ~ $1 trillion. He could mess up and destroy 99% of his wealth and he would still be worth $10 billion.
If he did something stupid again and lost 99% of the remaining 1%, he would still be worth $100 million.
It would take him screwing up a third time and losing 99% once again to be down to a middle-class net worth of $1 million.
I get it. I know how much people want to hate him. And how much fuel he has given for that.
But he's very talented, and really puts in the work. According to people I personally know who work with him closely, he's the real deal.
Doesn't stop him from being an asshole. But you get the bad with the good.
Also, so Elon can raid the company treasury.
On the other hand, large part of it is probably securing control of the company with super voting stocks.
Let’s be real: Elon has mentally checked out of Tesla. His heart and focus is at SpaceX, and long time Tesla holders have watched this slow-motion abandonment happen over the past few years. Just look at the lack of projects/innovation coming out of Tesla, and compare that to what's happening at SpaceX. Innovation has slowed to a crawl at Tesla. Tesla shareholders desperately want in on Elon's next project, and the only way they can protect their investment is if SpaceX buys them out.
[1] https://davidoks.blog/p/why-japanese-companies-do-so-many
> SpaceX spent $131 million on Cybertrucks in 2025, according to SpaceX's IPO filing.
Per their numbers (20k cars sold in 2025) and the list price (70-100k), this means that almost 10% of all Cybertrucks sold by Tesla in 2025 were bought by another Elon Musk company.
Under the terms set out in SpaceX's filing, Musk commands a supermajority of voting shares — more than 80% — and retains the right to sign off even on any board action that could result in his ouster.
He wants full control back.
Suspect it also means all pumping from now on out will be Space X, whilst Tesla will be "less bullish" than normal.
So I guess the "Musk plays 4d chess" view would be that there are obvious synergies between humanoid robots and AI.
Ugh. Honestly, that makes it seem worse than the purely cynical financial engineering takes.
If you are doing vertical integration, there are lots of common technologies and skills.
You can take $5 of labor, $5 of capital, and make something people will pay $20 for
hmokiguess•1h ago