SpaceX Investors Press for Details on Possible Merger With Tesla and Starship Progress
Investor Questions and Company Updates
By Akash Sriram
Oct 20 (Reuters) - SpaceX shareholders want to know when the rocket maker will merge with Tesla, bringing together two of Elon Musk's biggest companies in a union that investors have long speculated about.
Speculation Around SpaceX and Tesla Merger
"When will SpaceX merge with Tesla?" was the second-most upvoted question — drawing 26 upvotes — submitted by investors to SpaceX management ahead of its third-quarter earnings webcast on Tuesday. The same question received 128 upvotes on the Tesla investor relations site.
Barclays' Analysis and Market Expectations
Barclays suggested last week that a deal could be announced before Tesla's annual meeting, with SpaceX the likelier acquirer, though neither company nor Musk has officially committed to favoring a deal.
Starship and Lunar Lander Progress
Top-Voted Question: Starship Lunar Lander
LUNAR LANDER PROGRESS QUESTIONED
The top-voted question, with 38 upvotes, was on the progress of Starship's lunar lander hardware, in a list that showed retail investors were focused on Starship while analysts and institutional shareholders pressed for detail on AI revenue and spending.
Technological Challenges and Funding
SpaceX has made progress testing Starship, but key technologies needed to turn the giant rocket into a lunar lander, including refueling it in orbit, have yet to be fully demonstrated. The company's profitable satellite internet service, Starlink, is helping bankroll heavy spending on chips, terrestrial data centers and Grok, but losses at the AI businesses have ballooned.
Investor Sentiment and Question Trends
While the investor questions list ahead of its second-quarter earnings in August was topped by lighthearted, meme-driven submissions, this quarter's top questions leaned more toward corporate plans, with novelty entries mostly near the bottom.
It was not clear which questions executives would take when the webcast starts at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT).
AI Revenue and Data Center Concerns
AI Revenue Commitments
"What share of AI revenue is now under multi-year commitments, and what gives management confidence AI can grow at or above the company's overall rate for several years?" a prospective investor asked, earning no upvotes. SpaceX's AI revenue comes from a handful of customers, including Alphabet's Google and AI lab Anthropic, and the compute contracts can be terminated on about 90 days' notice.
Google Capacity and Data Center Operations
One institutional investor asked how much contracted Google capacity would stay available if a court halted gas turbines at the Colossus 2 data center in Memphis, Tennessee. Another asked whether Google had accepted the full capacity under its cloud agreement and whether SpaceX expected to earn the full contractual monthly rate.
Starlink Satellite Capacity and Capital Spending
An analyst's six-part question on Starlink satellite capacity, launch priorities and capital spending drew no upvotes.
Lighter and Novelty Submissions
Lighter submissions were scattered through the list. One user asked whether SpaceX would land a Tesla Roadster — a sports car with rocket thrusters for short jumps in the air — on the moon, adding, "(it) would be awesome."
(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Sayantani Ghosh and Matthew Lewis)
