In August 2026, Wall Street buzzed with speculation that Elon Musk could amass a fortune of up to $824 billion by facilitating a merger between Tesla and SpaceX, leveraging Tesla's compensation plan approved last year. The plan stipulates that Musk could receive up to 423 million Tesla shares upon achieving operational and market capitalization targets. In the event of a change in control at Tesla, the operational targets would be deemed met, and the market capitalization targets would become easier to achieve.