Elon Musk’s Companies Paid Each Other $600 Million in 2025 — And That’s Just the Beginning

A new analysis by Sherwood News reveals the rapidly growing financial web connecting Elon Musk’s empire. In 2025, Musk’s major companies — Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI — spent nearly $600 million on goods and services from each other. That’s more than double the $240 million recorded in 2024.

The Money Flows in 2025

Here’s how the biggest transactions broke down:

- xAI → Tesla: $430 million
The largest single flow. Most of this money went toward Tesla Megapacks — giant battery storage units the size of shipping containers. xAI needs enormous amounts of reliable power for its growing AI training clusters.

- SpaceX → Tesla: $143 million
Primarily for vehicles. SpaceX bought a significant number of Teslas, including roughly one in every five Cybertrucks sold last year. According to Sherwood, these purchases were made at standard market prices available to unaffiliated third parties.

• Tesla → SpaceX: $12 million;
• Tesla → xAI: $7 million;
• Tesla → Musk’s security companies: ~$5 million.

In total, Tesla was a net recipient — but not by as much as it might seem.

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The Big 2026 Move

These 2025 figures don’t even include the headline-grabbing transaction announced this year: Tesla invested $2 billion directly into xAI. That single investment dramatically shifts the balance and shows just how tightly integrated Musk’s companies are becoming.

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Why This Matters

This kind of internal spending is common in large conglomerates, but Musk’s empire is unique because of how intertwined the businesses are:

• xAI needs massive energy storage → buys Tesla Megapacks;
• SpaceX needs reliable high-performance vehicles for employees and operations → buys Teslas (especially Cybertrucks);
• Tesla benefits from huge internal demand that helps scale production.

Critics see it as Musk moving money between his companies to prop each other up. Supporters view it as smart vertical integration and efficient capital allocation within a closely aligned group of companies working toward ambitious long-term goals (AI, space, energy, etc.).

Either way, the trend is clear: the financial ties between Musk’s companies are deepening fast. With the $2 billion Tesla investment in xAI, 2026 is on track to shatter last year’s internal spending records.

As Sherwood notes, the interactive version of their infographic (available on their site) shows the flows in even more detail. The Musk ecosystem isn’t just a group of separate companies anymore — it’s becoming something closer to a tightly coordinated industrial alliance.