Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) has sold roughly $890 million in vehicles and batteries to other companies in Elon Musk’s orbit since 2023, and a Wednesday filing showed the buyers paid full price.

The SpaceX prospectus disclosed about $131 million in Cybertruck purchases last year at suggested retail prices, with Tesla’s audit committee reportedly clearing the deals as arm’s-length transactions.

The bulk was energy storage.

Tesla sold $506 million in Megapack batteries to xAI in 2025 and $191 million the year prior, according to the filing.

Those batteries are not just for ground operations. SpaceX’s S-1 lays out a plan to put artificial intelligence in orbit, fleets of satellites acting as data centers in space, and that costly buildout helps explain the steep operating loss the company reported on $18.7 billion in revenue.

It also shows the Tesla purchases are genuine spending rather than paper shuffling between Musk’s businesses.

SpaceX is burning cash now to build that network, and much of the hardware comes from Tesla.

Tesla’s Demand Problem

The full-price detail lands harder against a soft first quarter.

Tesla delivered 358,023 vehicles, missing consensus and falling 14.4% from the prior quarter, and produced about 50,000 more cars than it sold, an inventory build analysts read as a demand problem, according to Electrek.

Revenue and margins held up better, with automotive revenue up 16% and gross margin expanding to 21.1%.

Polymarket’s “Tesla deliveries in Q2” contract prices the 375,000 to 400,000 range as the most likely outcome at 38%, a Q1 recovery traders see as probable but not certain.

SpaceX/Tesla Merger?

The structural ties are already tightening. SpaceX is adding longtime Tesla director Ira Ehrenpreis and SpaceX board observer Randy Glein to its board, deepening a federation that increasingly operates as one company.

As the commingling deepens, speculation that Musk will fold the empire together keeps building. Chamath Palihapitiya has said he believes SpaceX will reverse merge into Tesla rather than go public, letting Musk consolidate his two seminal assets onto one cap table.

Dan Ives of Wedbush expects the two to merge eventually, and biographer Walter Isaacson has pointed the same direction.

Kalshi’s “When will Tesla and SpaceX merge?” contract now prices a deal before April 2027 at 40%, up five points.

For now, traders are betting the empire stays a federation rather than one ticker, even as the revenue keeps flowing between Musk’s companies. Tesla is trading at $422 today.

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