Five hundred and seventy-three million dollars. They call it “related-party transactions”. In the real world, it looks more like a multi-billion-dollar game of musical chairs where Elon Musk owns the chairs, the stereo, and the house they’re sitting in. Tesla’s recently filed 10-K/A document for 2025 seems a family tree showing how the Musk empire feeds itself. We’re talking about a circular economy so tight it makes a powerful vacuum look leaky.
The most glaring takeaway isn’t just the $573.4 million in revenue Tesla sucked out of SpaceX and xAI. It’s how that money was used to grease the wheels of Musk’s various narratives.
Take the Cybertruck, for instance. SpaceX quietly stepped in. In the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, SpaceX purchased 1,279 Cybertrucks. A staggering 18% of all Cybertruck registrations in the United States for that period. It’s a classic move: when the market is hesitant, just have your rocket company buy nearly a fifth of the stock. Problem solved, at least on the balance sheet.
Then there’s xAI. Tesla managed to squeeze $430.1 million out of Musk’s AI startup, mostly by selling Megapack energy storage units to power the very data centers that are supposedly going to save humanity. The gravy train didn’t stop at the New Year either, with another $78.1 million flowing in through February 2026. Meanwhile, Tesla dropped $3.3 million on X (formerly Twitter).
But the real magic trick happened with the $2 billion. In January 2026, Tesla shareholders agreed to invest $2 billion into xAI’s Series E. Just weeks later, SpaceX swallowed xAI in a “mega-deal,” and those AI shares were converted into a minority stake in SpaceX. Shareholders who thought they were buying a piece of the AI revolution woke up to find they owned less than 1% of a rocket company instead.
Toss in millions for private jets, tunnels under Giga Texas, and $4.8 million for Musk’s personal security detail, and you have the complete picture. The Audit Committee claims these are all “market rates”, but when you’re the one setting the market, the house always wins.
