SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell has started following Tesla's official account on X, a small change that merger watchers noticed on Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026, Teslarati reported. Whole Mars Catalog joked: "Shit, I better start following their X account if i'm gonna be helping run the company."
A follow is not an announcement. Neither company has said a deal is happening. What gives the moment weight is the timing: Barclays analyst Dan Levy has told clients an agreement could come before Tesla's annual meeting, with SpaceX as the buyer in an all-stock deal. Wedbush's Dan Ives has stuck with a 2027 timeline, Teslarati wrote.
Why Shotwell matters
When Musk was asked at the All-In Summit why Tesla and SpaceX remain separate, Shotwell sat next to him and said SpaceX personnel had already moved into xAI to fill leadership and engineering gaps. The businesses were integrating "faster than I thought," she said, though "not fully integrated yet," Teslarati reported. Her remit now includes Grok and SpaceX's AI compute buildout after SpaceX absorbed xAI.
Tesla's $2 billion xAI investment turned into a stake of less than 1% in SpaceX. The two also share the Terafab chip project in Austin; see our TSMC Terafab talks story. SpaceX reports earnings Tuesday and Tesla on Wednesday. Musk has said combining companies cannot be discussed on an earnings call.
Update, Oct. 19: Tesla's proxy, filed Monday, sets the annual meeting for Dec. 3, 2026 at Gigafactory Texas. Electrek noted that director Ira Ehrenpreis, who chairs Tesla's compensation and governance committees, joined SpaceX's board in February, and that a new retail auto-voting program starts with the next shareholder meeting after Dec. 3.
