What they're not telling you: # Tesla Made $573 Million Selling To Musk's Other Companies Last Year Tesla booked more than $570 million last year from transactions with other Elon Musk-controlled companies, revealing the extent to which his business empire has become a closed financial loop largely invisible to public scrutiny. The newly disclosed filing shows Tesla sold roughly $430 million in Megapack battery systems to xAI and another $143 million in vehicles—including Cybertrucks—to SpaceX. These are not arm's-length transactions between independent competitors.

Jordan Calloway
The Take
Jordan Calloway · Government Secrets & FOIA

# THE TAKE: Tesla's Self-Dealing Carousel Never Stops **Here's what actually happened:** Musk's companies funneled $573 million to Tesla last year—money that flows between entities *he controls*, meaning the wealth stays in the same pocket while Tesla's revenue sheet looks artificially robust. This isn't innovation. It's accounting theater. Tesla shareholders are getting fleeced. When SpaceX buys Starlink terminals from Tesla, or Neuralink procures parts, these aren't arm's-length transactions. There's no competitive bidding. No friction. Just Musk moving money from left hand to right, inflating Tesla's topline while extracting value. The SEC should've cracked down on this years ago. Instead, Tesla's board—stuffed with Musk loyalists—rubber-stamps it. Call it what it is: **systematic self-dealing**. Tesla's "revenue growth" is partially a mirage, and fiduciaries pretending otherwise aren't protecting shareholders—they're enabling theft.

What the Documents Show

They represent capital flowing between entities controlled by the same person, a structure that raises fundamental questions about how shareholder money moves through Musk's increasingly interconnected empire. The arrangement goes both ways: Tesla also invested $2 billion into SpaceX and xAI last year while paying the companies a combined $15 million for commercial and consulting services. What mainstream financial coverage has largely downplayed is the operational merger already underway across these companies. xAI has been absorbed into SpaceX. Engineers from Tesla have worked on projects at X.

🔎 Mainstream angle: The corporate press either ignored this story entirely or buried it in a 3-sentence brief. The framing, when it appeared at all, focused on process rather than impact.

Follow the Money

Grok, xAI's AI product, is being integrated into Tesla vehicles. Musk has publicly discussed future collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX on the next-generation Roadster. These are not isolated business relationships—they represent a unified corporate structure operating under a single decision-maker without the transparency typical of truly independent companies. The compensation disclosed last week adds another dimension to the governance concern. Musk's 2025 pay package was valued at roughly $158 billion based on maximum fair value of stock options—nearly 40 times Tesla's annual net income and 1.5 times the company's total annual revenue. This figure immediately caught Wall Street's attention because of its scale, but the real problem is its context.

What Else We Know

Musk is receiving unprecedented compensation from a public company while simultaneously making capital allocation decisions across multiple private and public entities under his control, with minimal external oversight on how those decisions affect shareholder value. For ordinary investors holding Tesla stock—whether directly or through retirement accounts and index funds—the implications are stark. When a company's chief executive is simultaneously investing shareholder capital into his other ventures, purchasing products from those ventures, and integrating them into the company's operations, the typical protections of corporate governance become theoretical. There is no adversarial negotiation. There is no independent board acting as a counterbalance. There is one person making decisions that benefit his total empire, not necessarily the shareholders of any single company within it.

Primary Sources

What are they not saying? Who benefits from this story staying buried? Follow the regulatory filings, the court dockets, and the FOIA releases. The truth is in the paperwork — it always is.

Disclosure: NewsAnarchist aggregates from public records, API feeds (Federal Register, CourtListener, MuckRock, Hacker News), and independent media. AI-assisted synthesis. Always verify primary sources linked above.