Musk backs a Tesla-SpaceX merger as both boards form special committees

Elon Musk said on SpaceX's third-quarter earnings call Tuesday that combining SpaceX and Tesla would be "a good idea," and that both boards have formed special committees of independent directors to study a merger. No terms have been agreed, and Musk, as a conflicted party, is excluded from the talks. He pitched the deal around AI, citing superintelligence software, robotics, the joint Terafab chip project and SpaceX's orbital data centers. Tesla approval would require a majority of all outstanding shares, and a combination would be worth about $3.5 trillion, the largest merger ever.