Tesla, China, SpaceX: Elon Musk Denies a Plan That Wall Street Takes Very Seriously

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. A piece of information that was enough to send traders into a frenzy, followed by a swift denial from Elon Musk. According to the Wall Street Journal, Tesla is seriously considering separating from its Chinese operations, whether through a spin-off, sale, or outright closure, in order to defuse regulatory obstacles that have blocked a merger with SpaceX for months. Key points of this article: * The Wall Street Journal revealed that Tesla is seriously considering separating from its operations in China. * Elon Musk quickly denied this information, calling the article "fake news" on social media. According to Bloomberg, which cited the Wall Street Journal's information published on July 30, Tesla executives were instructed to prepare for a potential separation of the company's Chinese operations. Three scenarios are circulating internally: a spin-off (creating an independent entity), a sale to a buyer, or, more radically, a closure of operations on the ground. However, no plan has been validated at this stage, and the timeline remains completely unclear. One important detail: the Gigafactory in Shanghai is not a secondary factory in Tesla's organizational chart. It remains its most productive site in the world, with an annual capacity of over 950,000 vehicles, and historically accounts for more than half of the group's global deliveries. The strategic reasoning can be summed up in one sentence: SpaceX is a major contractor for the U.S. defense, involved in sensitive satellite programs related to national security. Merging this activity with a company that has factories wholly owned in China, with access to production technologies and sensitive data, would open a geopolitical breach that Washington could hardly overlook. Separating Tesla China would then be akin to cutting this knot before it becomes an insurmountable regulatory obstacle. A defensive maneuver rather than a mere industrial choice. On X, Elon Musk did not take long to react, calling the information "absurdly fake news" and assuring that the subject had never even been discussed internally. A representative from Tesla China referred to it as "false information." > This has never even come up in a discussion ever. > > Absurdly fake news. > > People should assume news is fake until proven otherwise. > --- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 31, 2026 > "This subject has never been brought up in a discussion. Absurdly false information. One should consider all information as false until proven otherwise." However, the market did not really wait for the official version to react. Stocktwits reports that some traders are already speculating on a buyout scenario of Tesla by SpaceX at around $450 per share, indicating that the idea of a merger, even denied in its precise terms, continues to linger in minds since the first rumors in the spring. This is not the first time a strong denial from Musk closely follows a well-informed leak. Nevertheless, once the mechanism of suspicion is set in motion, it is difficult to stop: between a WSJ that cites precise internal sources and a CEO who dismisses everything with a wave of his hand on social media, investors have become accustomed to betting on the most embarrassing version.

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