Why would Elon Musk merge Tesla and SpaceX, according to Faiz Siddiqui and Kirsten Grind?

Musk has confirmed that Tesla and SpaceX are discussing a merger that could be the largest in corporate history. Faiz Siddiqui says it would turn a low-margin car business into the physical arm of an AI company, building AI-powered robots alongside SpaceX. Kirsten Grind takes a more cynical view: it is the latest step in Musk's financial engineering, folding a struggling company into a stronger one as Tesla car sales fall and the long-promised Roadster stays undelivered.

• Kara Swisher says she predicted the merger about a year earlier and compares the combined company to a turducken.
• SpaceX reported a $4.4 billion third-quarter profit, much of it from customers such as Google leasing compute.
• Musk's $1 trillion Tesla pay package depends on hitting high valuation benchmarks.

▸In their words

“It's not valued like a car company. It's valued like an AI company or a tech company,” Faiz Siddiqui · at 31:28 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on On with Kara Swisher (2026-10-29). Read the whole episode summary →

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