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All the ways Elon Musk’s companies are already intertwined, from a Tesla ‘collab’ with SpaceX to Grok in vehicles

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Elon Musk has for years blurred the lines between the companies he leads.

The intermingling of Elon Inc. businesses — a number which shrank from six entities to five when xAI acquired X last year, and from five to four when SpaceX acquired xAI on Monday — is something of signature for the CEO.

Over the past three years, his companies have stepped up their internal dealings, investing billions in one another, agreeing to buy up each other’s products, and exchanging software and materials.

The result is a tightly knit corporate ecosystem centered on Musk, where work — and even employees — can flow between the various entities in the name of vertical integration.

Here are some of the recent sharing agreements, purchases, and investments between Musk’s companies.

Musk’s employees often work between companies


Elon Musk took over Twitter about a year ago.

Shortly after acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk brought Tesla engineers into the offices to work on its code base.

Photo by -/Twitter account of Elon Musk/AFP via Getty Images



Musk has repeatedly drawn on employees from one company to support others in his portfolio.

In 2022, about a month after Musk bought Twitter — now known as X — he sent roughly 50 Tesla employees to the social-media company’s headquarters to help overhaul its code-review systems, according to court filings.

Musk later argued in court that the Tesla employees had “volunteered” to do the work and that their temporary reassignment should not concern Tesla’s board.

Executives share overlapping functions on several of Musk’s companies, too, according to insider org charts obtained by Business Insider.

For example, Charlie Kuehmann, the vice president of materials and engineering at Tesla, also holds the same title at SpaceX.

SpaceX contributes to Roadster, Tesla provides SpaceX with energy-storage systems


A Falcon Heavy rocket from SpaceX takes off from a launch pad in Florida during a clear day.

SpaceX is lending rocket-boosting tech to Tesla’s upcoming hyper-powered sports car, Musk said.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images



SpaceX is a major customer of Tesla’s energy business, purchasing batteries for robotics power and Megapack energy-storage systems.

It also reportedly invested $2 billion into xAI as a part of a previous funding round.

Musk has also said that Tesla’s long-awaited next-generation Roadster will be a “Tesla/SpaceX collab” and feature SpaceX-built cold-gas thrusters. The hyper-powered sports car’s launch event is penciled in for April 1.

“It’s gonna be really cool, and it’s gonna have some rocket technology in it,” Musk also said during a 2024 sit-down with Don Lemon.

SpaceX and Boring Company buy Tesla cars


Boring Company Tesla entering tunnel

A Tesla entering the Hawthorne Tunnel, made by Elon Musk’s Boring Co.

Robyn Beck/Pool via REUTERS



Aside from full-blown investments or acquisitions, the most publicly visible example of Musk’s companies coordinating might be Tesla’s vehicle sales to his tunnel-building start-up.

The Boring Company, which operates tunnels in Las Vegas and Texas, uses fleets of Tesla vehicles to transport passengers through its underground systems. The tunnel builder has also constructed tunnels around Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin, Texas.

It isn’t alone. SpaceX also purchased an unspecified number of Musk’s Cybertrucks.

Tesla and xAI’s ‘framework agreement’ follows Grok integration into cars, Optimus demo bots.


A person in light blue jeans sits in the front passenger seat inside a self-driving Tesla.

Tesla wants to build out its AI software, including its self-driving ambitions. CEO Elon Musk said a $2 billion investment in his software company would help.

Jay Janner/The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images



Tesla’s earnings on Wednesday disclosed that it had agree to invest $2 billion in xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, with a related “framework agreement” to explore additional collaboration opportunities.

Tesla has already integrated xAI’s Grok into its vehicles, allowing drivers to chat with the AI and use it to add and edit navigation destinations.

Videos have shown early versions of Tesla’s in-development Optimus robot using xAI’s Grok AI chatbot for its voice.

xAI has also reportedly told investors that it’s working on AI that could power Tesla’s forthcoming Optimus humanoid robots.

Tesla executives said the $2 billion investment supports the automaker’s push into self-driving technology. For example, the earnings deck explained that xAI-developed software will analyze vehicle interiors and assist with route planning, including adding high-occupancy-vehicle lanes when the car is full.

For xAI, the investment adds capital to the cash-hungry buildout of data centers and their energy needs.

The deal marked one of the clearest examples of capital flowing from Musk’s public company into a privately held firm he controls.

It’s all par for the course for ‘Elon Inc.’

The growing web of internal deals has fueled discussion among investors and analysts about whether Musk’s companies are evolving into something closer to a single, vertically integrated enterprise.

And it’s not clear if it’ll stop at SpaceX combining with xAI.

There’s also been recent reports that Tesla could combine with SpaceX.

“In Tesla’s case, an important factor to consider is that investors are buying into Elon Musk’s vision for the future as much as they are buying into an automaker or clean energy company,” Lou Whiteman, a contributing analyst at The Motley Fool, told Business Insider.

“Since this group of companies, public and private, combine to represent Elon Musk’s full vision of the future, I’d bet that many investors are happy to see Tesla involved in all aspects of ‘Elon Inc.'”




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Ashley St. Clair sues Elon Musk’s xAI over alleged explicit Grok deepfake images

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Ashley St. Clair, who gave birth to one of Elon Musk’s sons in 2024, sued Musk’s xAI in a New York court on Thursday, alleging that its chatbot Grok generated sexually explicit deepfake images of her at users’ request.

In the complaint, St. Clair, a writer, influencer, and political strategist, claims X users prompted Grok to manipulate images of her, including photos from when she was 14, into graphic sexual content. She alleges some images remained online for more than a week and that her premium X account was later terminated after she complained.

She is also requesting a temporary restraining order to compel xAI to immediately cease from “the intentional disclosure of nonconsensual intimate images.”

xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Grok first promised Ms. St. Clair that it would refrain from manufacturing more images unclothing her,” the complaint read. “Instead, Defendant retaliated against her, demonetizing her X account and generating multitudes more images of her,” the suit alleged.

St. Clair is also involved in a separate suit with Musk over the custody of their son, in which she sought sole custody.

xAI responded the same day with a separate lawsuit, arguing that St. Clair agreed to its terms of service, which requires any litigation to be heard in Texas. St. Clair is represented by attorney Carrie Goldberg, who specializes in cases involving abuse and has represented clients against Harvey Weinstein.

“xAI is not a reasonably safe product,” Goldberg said in a statement to Business Insider. “This harm flowed directly from deliberate design choices that enabled Grok to be used as a tool of harassment and humiliation. Companies should not be able to escape responsibility when the products they build predictably cause this kind of harm.”

The lawsuit followed international backlash against the Grok chatbot for its ability to undress images of real people and create sexualized images without their consent at users’ request.

Indonesia and Malaysia blocked access to Grok, while UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called explicit images generated by Grok “disgusting” and “shameful” in a meeting with the House of Commons.

On Wednesday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta also announced that his office is investigating the “non-consensual, sexually explicit material that xAI has produced and posted online” of “women and children in nude and sexually explicit situations.”

X said on the same day in a blog post that users would no longer be allowed to create AI photos of real people in sexualized or revealing clothing on the platform, adding that the restriction “applies to all users, including paid subscribers.”

As of Thursday morning, Business Insider reporter Henry Chandonnet found that it is still “surprisingly easy” to prompt Grok to create nude images of him by going to the app itself instead of using the Grok chatbot on X.




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‘This case is going to trial’: Judge rejects Sam Altman’s efforts to toss Elon Musk’s OpenAI lawsuit

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It looks like Sam Altman and Elon Musk are headed for a courtroom showdown.

During a hearing on Wednesday, a California judge said she plans to reject Altman’s lawyers’ last-ditch efforts to end Musk’s case against OpenAI and its CEO.

“This case is going to trial,” US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said at a hearing to consider whether the evidence was sufficient to warrant a jury trial.

“I think there’s plenty of evidence,” she said, referring to Musk’s case. “It’s circumstantial, but that’s how these things work.”

In his lawsuit filed in 2024, Musk accused OpenAI of misleading him in its decision to abandon its original nonprofit mission and structure in favor of a profit-oriented model, including through its partnership with Microsoft.

Musk says he donated $38 million to the maker of ChatGPT over the years to support its mission to develop AI for the benefit of humankind. The Tesla CEO is seeking monetary damages, as well as a judgment to void Microsoft’s licensing agreement with OpenAI.

At a hearing on Wednesday, an Oakland federal court judge said she felt there was enough evidence that Musk may have been deceived to allow the case to move forward to a jury. A trial is scheduled for March.

“There were assurances made, and promises made, that the structure would be maintained,” she said. “There was lots of information that was not shared.”

The judge added that she also felt “there are strong arguments by the defense.”

“I think the jury is going to get to decide,” she said.

OpenAI lawyers have denied Musk’s allegations, saying Musk was aware of the company’s for-profit plans as early as 2018. OpenAI has also pointed out that it is still controlled by OpenAI’s nonprofit arm.

“Mr Musk’s lawsuit continues to be baseless and a part of his ongoing pattern of harassment, and we look forward to demonstrating this at trial,” a spokesperson for OpenAI told Business Insider. “We remain focused on empowering the OpenAI Foundation, which is already one of the best resourced nonprofits ever.”

A spokesperson for Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk has filed multiple lawsuits against OpenAI. Most recently, his AI company, xAI, sued OpenAI in September, accusing it of stealing trade secrets and targeting its employees for recruitment. At the time, an OpenAI spokesperson told Business that the lawsuit is “the latest chapter in Mr. Musk’s ongoing harassment.”

Musk helped found OpenAI in 2015, but left the company in 2018. At the time he said his work with OpenAI could present a conflict of interest with Tesla’s AI ambitions.

Since, Musk has repeatedly criticized Altman and OpenAI, including the company’s structure. Musk later went on to launch his own AI company, xAI, in 2023.




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Polly Thompson

Elon Musk’s Starlink is adding 20,000 new users a day as it hits 9 million customers

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Moving at superspeed isn’t limited to SpaceX’s rockets.

Elon Musk’s satellite and rocket company has secured one million new customers for its Starlink internet in under seven weeks and is now active in 155 markets, the company wrote in a post on X on Monday evening.

“Starlink is connecting more than 9M active customers with high-speed internet across 155 countries, territories, and many other markets,” the company said.

In a similar post from November 5, SpaceX said Starlink had 8 million customers, meaning that its customer base has expanded at a rate of more than 20,000 per day since that date.

SpaceX, which uses a constellation of more than 9,000 low-orbit satellites to provide its Starlink internet connection, including to remote areas, is reportedly planning to go public next year at a valuation of $1.5 trillion.

Elon Musk, who founded the company in 2002, said this month that the satellite network was “by far” the largest driver of SpaceX’s revenue.

The numbers close an explosive year of growth for SpaceX. In a December 2024 progress report, SpaceX said Starlink had 4.6 million customers, and by August 2025, the number was up to 7 million.

Global web traffic from users on SpaceX’s satellite-based internet service more than doubled in 2025, according to data from Cloudflare, a cybersecurity company that handles tens of millions of requests between users and websites every second.

Around two dozen airlines have also announced plans to use Starlink to offer high-speed WiFi on their planes, and SpaceX has signalled it could soon launch its own mobile carrier service powered by the satellite network.

SpaceX has successfully commercialized reusable rockets, a feat previously thought impossible by many within the space industry, and now launches more cargo into orbit than any other company.

It has also capitalized on opportunities that emerged as NASA and the Pentagon moved away from government-only spaceflight, and filled a massive unmet demand in global connectivity.

Led by Musk, who is the CEO and founder, SpaceX is also known for its intense, efficiency-driven culture.

SpaceX ultimately plans to fulfill its billionaire founder’s ambitious visions of colonizing Mars and putting data centers in space with its giant Starship rocket.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.




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What is Elon Musk’s net worth? Find out the wealth of the Tesla, SpaceX CEO

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Elon Musk has a net worth of around $638 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.

His net worth is closely tied to Tesla’s share price, but the tech mogul’s wealth comes from several sources and often fluctuates. He crossed over the $600 billion threshold in December following an $800 billion valuation of SpaceX.

That means Musk regularly trades places with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison for the title of world’s richest person.

How has Musk’s net worth changed over time?

Musk, who was born in South Africa, moved to Canada and dropped out of a Ph.D. at Stanford, became a millionaire before he hit 30. Musk started Zip2, a website that provided city travel guides to newspapers, with his brother Kimbal Musk, and sold it to Compaq for more than $300 million in 1999. Musk, then aged 27, is believed to have got $22 million from the deal.

He went on to cofound online bank X.com in 1999. It soon merged with Peter Thiel’s Confinity to become PayPal, and the company was bought for $1.5 billion by eBay in 2002. Despite having been ousted as CEO, Musk walked away with around $165 million. 

Musk cofounded space-exploration company SpaceX in 2002. In 2004, he became an investor in and the chairman of EV company Tesla.

During the financial crisis in 2008, he saved Tesla from bankruptcy with a $40 million investment and a $40 million loan. That same year, he was named Tesla’s CEO.

Musk said 2008 was “the worst year of my life.” Alongside problems in his personal life, Tesla kept losing money and SpaceX was having trouble launching the first version of its Falcon rocket. By 2009, Musk was living off personal loans.

Tesla went public in 2010, though, and Musk’s estimated net worth steadily climbed. In 2012, he debuted on Forbes’ Billionaires List with an estimated wealth of $2 billion. 

In 2016, Musk set up the tunnel-digging business, the Boring Company.

The next year, he founded the neurotechnology startup Neuralink.

Musk’s net worth began a rapid ascent at the start of the pandemic as Tesla stock prices soared. Musk started 2020 with an estimated net worth of just under $30 billion and was worth around $170 billion just a year later — a more than five-fold increase in just a year. His estimated fortune peaked at around $340 billion in November 2021.

Musk also bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, serving as its CEO until he stepped down in early June 2023.

The stock is known to be volatile and has had its ups and downs since then.

The morning of Trump’s reelection on November 6, 2024, which Musk heavily campaigned for, Tesla’s stock was up about 15%, for instance.

Following an insider share sale at SpaceX, which boosted the startup to a $350 billion valuation, Musk’s wealth surged again in December 2024 by about $50 billion in one day, making Musk the first billionaire to reach the $400 billion mark.

But in the months following its election highs, Tesla’s stock dropped by over 50% following a number of factors, including a vehicle sales slump, a rising Tesla boycott movement, and Musk’s stint in the US government, which some investors felt took him away from his day-in-day-out Tesla CEO duties.

Tesla’s stock rose back up following the CEO taking a step back from his role in the Department of Government Efficiency, but it continues to have big swings. Musk had one of his single-day highest net worth losses in June 2025 following a public spat on social media with the President, in which Trump floated the idea of having his government contracts revoked, and Musk repeatedly criticized Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”

The stock has since rebounded and was up over 25% in 2025 as of December.

Musk’s net worth reached unprecedented heights in December 2025, as Musk confirmed SpaceX was planning an IPO. After an insider share sale valued the private company at $800 billion, Musk’s estimated net worth surpassed $600 billion.

Musk was the first billionaire to have reached a net worth of over $500 billion, according to Forbes, making him one step closer to becoming the world’s first trillionaire.

Where does Musk’s fortune come from?

Musk’s wealth is largely dependent on Tesla shares. Though he takes no salary from Tesla, he’s awarded stock options when the company hits challenging performance metrics.

Musk’s previous $55 billion compensation plan was voided in January 2024 on the grounds that Musk had undue influence over the package and its approval due to close ties with several board members. At its annual shareholder meeting in 2024, investors voted to approve Musk’s pay package. However, the judge upheld the original ruling, and the company has since appealed the decision.

A compensation package Tesla proposed for its CEO in September 2025 could turn Musk into the first trillionaire. The unprecedented plan included a new set of 12 milestones to be completed over a 10-year period, such as boosting the company’s valuation to $8.5 trillion, selling 12 million cars, getting a million robotaxis on the road, and coming up with a succession plan.

A large part of Musk’s net worth comes from Tesla shares, while roughly over 20% comes from SpaceX stock.

The rest of his wealth comes from shares in Twitter and The Boring Company, as well as other miscellaneous liabilities.




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