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

• The five companies led by Elon Musk have increasingly become intertwined, even before merger chatter.
• The firms have at various time shared employees and purchased batteries, software, and vehicles from each other.
• SpaceX is expected to contribute to the upcoming Roadster, for example, and xAI's Grok is in Teslas and Optimus demo bots.

Elon Musk is running some of the world's most valuable companies. But they've been doing business with each other long before recent merger chatter around Elon Inc.

The billionaire leads five major companies: Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Company, Neuralink, and xAI, which recently absorbed his social media company, X.

Over the last three years, those companies have stepped up their internal dealings, buying one another's products, exchanging software and materials, and announcing investments worth billions of dollars.

The result is a tightly knit corporate ecosystem with Musk at its center.

For consumers and Tesla's many fans, that kind of vertical integration can look like a strength. Musk has argued that closer ties between his companies make them more resilient to geopolitical risk and supply-chain shocks.

"Done correctly, inter-company connections make a lot of sense," Lou Whiteman, a contributing analyst at The Motley Fool, told Business Insider. "The important thing is to ensure good governance is in place, so that, for example, Boring is paying a fair price for Tesla vehicles."

Other analysts and investors say the arrangement concentrates too much power in Musk's hands. Tesla's eight-member board includes longtime allies of the billionaire — including his brother.

None of Musk's companies responded to requests for comment from Business Insider.

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

Musk's employees often work between companies

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

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

Perhaps the most public example of Musk's companies coordinating is 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.

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.

'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.

There's also been recent reports that some of Musk's companies could merge — including potential combinations of Tesla and xAI or SpaceX and xAI.

Whiteman said many Tesla investors appear comfortable with that direction.

"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," he said.

"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.'"