- Two guesses, not one date: either they try to put the merger on the 2026 Tesla annual meeting, or they announce it and vote it later at a special meeting with its own proxy (like SolarCity).
- If it is this year’s AGM, the announcement has to show up between now and 16 October. If it is a special meeting, my best guess is that the window runs from next week through mid-December, maybe a little longer.
- The tape is ready either way: 20- and 60-day VWAP ✅, three months post-IPO ✅, Cursor is closed ✅. Lock-ups go smoothly ✅ and S&P500 inclusion seems on the horizon, most likely earliest date: 17 September 2027 .
Two scenarios. Same breadcrumbs. Different timespans.**
Listing the breadcrumbs we have:
We are past the boring but necessary bits:
- 20 trading days of SPCX — done
- Cursor merger closed mid August
- 60 trading days of SPCX — done
- Saturday 12 September = three months post-IPO
The 20 and 60 trading days criteria is the VWAP tape the bankers need for a fairness opinion that is not a cartoon. Red is the three-month floor. Yellow is the lock-ups that still open this year. I still think anyone who desperately wanted out of SpaceX already sold what they could. The rest is happy to be invested.
The best guesses about the months ahead:
Every M&A person I talk to says China, EU and US on a deal this size will make it last at least a year until closing is possible.
The big event to work towards is SpaceX's S&P 500 inclusion. Conditions to be admitted are:
- twelve months since IPO
- enough public float
- GAAP net income from continuing operations positive in the latest quarter and positive for the last four quarters added together
- market cap.
Those boxes are most likely all ticked by July 2027. Hence my most likely earliest inclusion date is 17 September 2027. If there is a merger announcement, and SPCX is ready to be included, S&P will with almost certainty WAIT FOR THE MERGER TO BE CLOSED to let the combined company replace the TSLA ticker in the S&P 500. Another reason to get this all done asap.
Now the two guesses:
Scenario I — They want the merger on the 2026 annual meeting ballot
This was my first map, the one I presented on the Cyberbulls show. If Tesla’s own annual meeting is where shareholders vote the deal, the announcement cannot wander around until Christmas.
Then the announcement has to land between now and October 16.
Why 16 October: fifty days before the outer bound for a 2026 Tesla annual meeting under Texas law (thirteen months after last year’s meeting → 6 December). You also have last year’s pattern sitting on the chart, in orange: preliminary proxy around 5 September, definitive around 17 September, meeting in early November. Those are reference dates, not 2026 facts. We still have no 2026 proxy.
This scenario is the tight one. It is also the one M&A people keep telling me is the exception, not the rule.
Scenario II — The merger vote is its own special meeting
This is the version the M&A people (and Grok) keep coming back to: you do not fold a SpaceX merger proposal into a regular Tesla shareholder meeting with its director elections (Elon is on the ballot this year, as are Robyn Denholm and JB Straubel) and a stack of shareholder proposals. You file an S-4. You call a special meeting. You mail a merger proxy. Different document, different day.
Then the announcement window gets larger: Starting next week, through mid-December. Maybe a little past that.
By setting up a special meeting and separate vote, we are no longer clocking out on October 16. You still want a tape the fairness opinions can defend. You still would rather not announce into the noisiest lock-up week if you can help it. You still would rather do this under an administration that does not treat the word “merger” as a subpoena. And you still want the combined company in a position to hit S&P as early as possible.
The lock-ups stay on the chart because they change the float, not because I consider them to be key to the announcement anymore.
- End of October / Beginning of November: SPCX announcement of Q3 results plus two trading days, the big tranche, ~28%.
- 8 December: when the 180-day classic early-investor lock-up ends.
Some defend the theory that the merger announcement only comes after those dates. I would by far not prefer it. As it delays everything else.
The SolarCity precedent:
If SolarCity serves as the example, it is not going to be an annual-meeting vote, here that timeline:
- Tesla’s 2016 AGM had already happened on May 31, 2016.
- Tesla and SolarCity signed the merger agreement and published a press release on Sunday, July 31, 2016
- They filed the first S-4 — which was the joint proxy — on August 31 (31 days later)
- the SEC declared it effective on October 12 (73 days after signing, 42 days after that first S-4)
- the definitive book went in the mail on October 13.
- Both special meetings were on November 17: 109 days after signing, 78 days after the first S-4, and 36 days after the S-4 went effective. And 5.5 months after the regular shareholder meeting.
And do keep in mind that the timeline after the announcement will be much longer for the SpaceX-Tesla merger than for SolarCity, where no foreign regulators were involved.
There will be a lot of waiting in the coming months. So we wait.
