The Committees Nobody Named: Both Boards Published Who Is Independent — Neither Published Who Is Deciding

The merger is now a process, and the process has a shape the public record describes in outline only. On October 20, 2026, on SpaceX’s Q3 earnings call, Musk confirmed that both companies have formed special committees of independent directors to explore a combination, with himself recused as a conflicted party. The committees are the machinery that is supposed to negotiate the deal at arm’s length — the story so far is on the merger talk page. What the machinery is made of — the names — is not in the record. Neither company has published its committee roster. Neither has named its advisers.

Label for the whole page: Confirmed where a filing or a named publication states it; the committee membership itself is unpublished, and this page treats that absence as the finding — it does not fill it in by inference from the board lists.

What is confirmed

• The committees exist. Musk, on the October 20 call: both Tesla and SpaceX have formed special committees of independent directors to explore a merger; he is recused as a “conflicted party.” Label: Primary — his own words on the company’s earnings call.
• No determination has been made. SpaceX’s regulatory filing of October 22 states its special committee has reached no determination on any combination. Label: Primary — the filing, as reported by Reuters (via WNCY, October 22).
• The approval chain runs through Musk anyway. The same October 22 filing states that any combination would require approval by the special committee, the board, and Musk as controlling shareholder. Recused from the talks; required for the outcome. Both halves of that sentence are SpaceX’s own filing.

The two lists that are public

What the record does contain is who counts as independent at each board — assembled by ReadUs247 (October 22) from Tesla’s definitive proxy (filed October 19) and SpaceX’s investor-relations page:

• Tesla lists seven independent directors.
• SpaceX lists six independent directors.

A special committee is drawn from a board’s independent directors; that is what the lists are for. But a list of everyone who could serve is not a roster of who is serving. The subset — which of Tesla’s seven sit across from which of SpaceX’s six — has not been published by either company, and no adviser, bank, or law firm attached to either committee has been named in the record ReadUs247 assembled.

The name on both lists

Ira Ehrenpreis appears on both lists — an independent director of Tesla and an independent director of SpaceX (ReadUs247, October 22, from the two companies’ own publications).

That overlap is the sharpest fact in this story, and it needs to be stated at exactly its own size. A special committee exists to represent one side of a negotiation against the other: Tesla’s committee protects Tesla’s shareholders in a deal with SpaceX; SpaceX’s committee does the reverse. A director who sits on both boards is eligible, on paper, for either room. Whether Ehrenpreis serves on either committee is undisclosed — the record does not say he is on one, and it does not say he is on neither. The overlap is a fact about the boards. Anything stronger would be a claim, and no source in the record makes it.

The director who is not independent — and why he is in the story

Antonio Gracias sits on SpaceX’s board but is not counted among its independent directors. Gracias founded Valor Equity Partners; Valor holds 3.4% of SpaceX and finances SpaceX hardware through leaseback arrangements (ReadUs247, October 22).

Gracias is named here not because he is suspected of a committee seat — there are no published seats to suspect anyone of — but because his entry on the board list is what the independence line means in practice. The six names on SpaceX’s independent list are the six without a financial apparatus of that kind attached to the other side of the table. The lists are the companies drawing that line in public. The committees are where the line is supposed to do its work, in private, unnamed.

What has not been published

As of the last check, the record assembled from the proxy, the SpaceX IR page, and the October 22 filing contains none of the following:

• Either committee’s roster — not one member named by either company.
• Either committee’s advisers — no bank, law firm, or fairness-opinion provider named.
• Either committee’s charter or mandate — what each is authorized to accept or reject.
• Any timetable — no target date for a determination appears in the record.

The committees were confirmed on October 20. The merger they are studying was valued at roughly $3.5 trillion by Reuters (October 21–22 reporting). The process is real, dated, and filed. Its membership is, so far, a blank page with two board lists standing next to it.

The approval the process cannot route around

The October 22 filing’s controlling-shareholder clause matters because of the size of the control. Musk’s SpaceX voting power is printed four ways in the current record, and this page does not settle them:

• 85% — Reuters, October 21.
• ~82% — Inc, October 22.
• 85.1% — the May S-1; 82.4% — the final prospectus (both via ReadUs247, from the filings themselves).

His economic stake is a different, smaller number — 48.4% of the shares, per the Schedule 13G figures laid out on the lock-up page. Voting control and economic ownership are different quantities, and the committee process runs on the first while the deal’s fairness is argued on the second. What no version of the figures changes: the filing says the controlling shareholder must approve whatever the unnamed committees eventually recommend.

What would close the gap

Three publications would turn this page from an absence into a roster: either company naming its committee members; either company naming its advisers; or a merger filing that lists both, which any eventual deal will require. Until then, the dated checkpoints are elsewhere: Tesla’s December 3 meeting is three director elections, a say-on-pay vote, and an auditor ratification — the proxy page explains why December 3 is not a merger vote. The shares that make the controlling shareholder controlling are on their own calendar, on the lock-up page.