Tech billionaire Elon Musk said Tuesday that the boards of SpaceX and Tesla had separately formed special committees to discuss the idea of a merger, taking a small step toward the possible consolidation of his two biggest companies.
\n\nMusk, who is the CEO of both companies, said that the special committees had not reached an agreement and that there was no guarantee they would. He said a merger would require support from both sets of shareholders.
\n\n“I think some people out there assume that a SpaceX and Tesla merger is a certainty, and I think that would be overstating it,” he said.
\n\nMusk spoke about the potential tie-up during a call with Wall Street analysts about SpaceX’s quarterly results, which surpassed estimates; the company’s revenue more than doubled in part from renting out computing capacity to other artificial intelligence firms.
\n\nThere has been intense speculation in the stock market over whether a combination might happen, and the two companies already overlap in some areas, including semiconductor manufacturing. In January, Tesla announced that it was investing about $2 billion to acquire shares in an AI startup that’s a subsidiary of SpaceX.
\n\nMusk said that, because he’s a conflicted party under securities…
Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/business