Elon Musk walks to accept the National Medal of Science during an event at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo)
Elon Musk has said he would back a merger of SpaceX and Tesla, as his rocket and AI company reported its first quarterly profit since going public, driven by deals to rent out computing power to AI firms.
Asked about a possible tie-up on a call with analysts, Musk said he felt he was "tap dancing through a minefield," but that a combination would be "a good idea."
Musk said special committees of independent directors at both SpaceX and Tesla have been set up to study the idea at the request of shareholders.
The committees have not agreed on the terms of any deal and there is no guarantee they will, Musk said, cautioning that it would be overstating it to treat a merger as a certainty.
He said the two companies could gain from working together on AI software, chip design, robotics and space-based computing.
His remarks came after SpaceX posted net income of $4.4 billion for the July-September period, compared with a loss of $1.1 billion a year earlier.
Revenue jumped 161 percent to $14.6 billion. The quarterly results follow a bumpy start on Wall Street.
SpaceX began trading on the Nasdaq on June 12 after an IPO priced at $135 a share that raised about $85.7 billion.
Its first earnings report as a listed company showed second-quarter revenue of $7.8 billion and a net loss of $541 million.
The AI division, which SpaceX now calls "Super Intelligence," drove the turnaround. Super Intelligence is U.S. President Donald Trump's preferred term for AI.
The unit's revenue rose more than nine times from a year earlier to $7.6 billion, overtaking the Starlink satellite internet business as the company's largest source of sales.
