Musk vs. Musk: what will happen to Tesla after the SpaceX IPO

On May 20, SpaceX filed a prospectus for the largest IPO in history - there are market concerns that this could threaten Elon Musk's other business, Tesla. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg do not rule out that investors will redirect capital from the electric car maker to his "shiny new toy." Musk's appetite for deals doesn't stop there, however. Thirty days after its planned listing, SpaceX is set to close its $60 billion purchase of Cursor - and it looks like that's just the beginning. The next big target could be Uber, according to TMT investments PLC co-founder Herman Kaplun.

I think Tesla will try to buy Uber within the year. For a large-scale robotaxi launch, Musk needs one thing that can't be built quickly - a demand platform. 200 million users, licenses in hundreds of cities, built-in relationships with regulators. That's Uber. Tesla already has everything else.

A precedent was set this week. SpaceX buys Cursor 30 days after its IPO. Same hand, same logic - close a weak spot in the stack with one deal instead of years of development. The numbers allow. Uber is worth $150 billion, Tesla is worth $1.5 trillion. The deal closes in stock, Uber shareholders get a premium and walk away.

He's gonna try. Because the outcome is not obvious. Antitrust regulators may block it - vertical integration of manufacturer and distribution platform is their favorite case. But they may also let it pass: if Tesla actually launches robotaxis at scale by then, Uber turns from a dominant platform into a besieged fortress. Shareholders will run for the exits themselves.

The deal changes the market either way. After such an offer, Uber is no longer a neutral platform for Waymo and everyone else. And the question of survival of car manufacturers without connection with taxi fleets will become complicated.

Stocks talk about market ambivalence. Uber rose 40% in 2025, reached an all-time high of $102 in the fall - and has since pulled back 25%. The market doesn't know who Uber will be in three years: a beneficiary of the AV revolution [AV - autonomous transportation - Oninvest note] as an aggregator or a victim if Tesla closes the chain on itself.

For Tesla, it's also the answer to the Chinese challenge. BYD is squeezing margins on conventional electric cars - a price war that Tesla can't win. Robotaxi changes the model radically: you sell the car to your own fleet, get revenue from each trip, and remove the dependence on the retail customer. The vertical is closed.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor