Musk disclosed last week that SpaceX and Tesla’s boards had formed special committees to discuss a potential merger. Musk himself cannot interfere, he said, stressing that the special committees are composed of independent directors.

“Because I’m a conflicted party, I can’t actually be in the discussions,” Musk said during SpaceX’s earnings call. “It’s an odd kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking, and I can’t be in the conversation.”Musk didn’t say which of SpaceX’s and Tesla’s directors are on the special committees. While Tesla has taken steps in recent years to make over its board with newer members it deems independent, both companies are stacked with directors who have personal or business relationships with Musk. Those ties have invited scrutiny and legal challenges, including over the 2016 acquisition of SolarCity and the 2018 award of a massive pay package for Musk. Musk ultimately prevailed in both those sagas.

Three members of SpaceX’s board and two Tesla directors are non-independent, and thus won’t be on the special committees. Musk himself is on the board of both companies, and his brother Kimbal is a director at Tesla. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell is non-independent because she and Musk have executive roles. The one other board member who isn’t independent is Antonio Gracias, the founder of Valor Equity Partners, whose firm is one of SpaceX’s top shareholders.

Here’s a look at the directors deemed independent who Tesla and SpaceX have to choose from for committees.

Robyn Denholm The chair of Tesla’s board since 2018 stepped up her engagement with institutional and retail shareholders to drum up support for moving the company’s headquarters to Texas and re-approving Musk’s compensation in 2024. During the legal challenge mounted against that pay package, Denholm acknowledged that the amount of wealth she’d derived from exercising Tesla stock options had been “life-changing.”

Jack Hartung Hartung is the newest member of the board, joining in June 2025 shortly after Chipotle Mexican Grill announced his retirement following an almost 25-year run. Tesla has said in regulatory filings including its most recent proxy that a son-in-law of Hartung has been a non-executive, salaried employee since December 2016.

JB Straubel Straubel, who’s been on the board since 2023, was a co-founder of Tesla and chief technology officer for 14 years. He left in 2019 to run Redwood Materials, a battery-recycling and energy storage startup he founded. Redwood has commercial agreements with Tesla, according to Tesla’s latest proxy filing.

Joe Gebbia The co-founder of Airbnb joined Tesla’s board in 2022. When Tesla established a special committee to evaluate moving the company’s legal headquarters to Texas two years ago, Gebbia was on it. When the special committee expanded its scope to revisit Musk’s compensation, Gebbia withdrew for reasons that initially were vague (Tesla cited “an abundance of caution” and “the potential for unfair attacks based on perceived conflicts of interest”).

Gebbia later told Reuters that Musk had discussed purchasing a house from his startup and that he didn’t want this to be used against the committee. He was involved in the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk’s controversial effort to remake the federal government, last year before President Donald Trump tapped him to the newly created role of chief design officer.

Kathleen Wilson-Thompson Wilson-Thompson was one of the two directors Tesla added to its board in late 2018 as part of the securities fraud settlement following Musk’s misleading “funding secured” tweets about taking the company private at $420 per share. She retired from the role of global chief human resources officer for Walgreens in 2021 and ended up being the sole member of the committee that recommended shareholders approve moving the company to Texas and ratifying Musk’s compensation in 2024. She and Denholm were the two directors on the committee behind last year’s separate pay package for Musk.

James Murdoch The chief executive officer of Lupa Systems, a private holding company and investment firm, previously worked at 21st Century Fox, founded by his father, Rupert. He’s an investor in SpaceX and testified during a trial over Musk’s pay package that he had been friends with Musk since as far back as 2006. He was recruited to Tesla’s board during one of their family vacations together.

Ira Ehrenpreis Ehrenpreis is the one person currently serving on the boards of SpaceX and Tesla, and both companies consider him independent. He’s been a Tesla director since 2007 and joined SpaceX’s board earlier this year, after investing in the rocket company through his venture capital firm DBL Partners in 2019. Given his role on both boards, it’s unlikely he could serve on a merger-related special committee.

Roelof Botha Botha joined SpaceX’s board in June, after the company’s initial public offering. He and Musk are fellow South Africans and have known each other for decades as members of the “PayPal Mafia,” an informal network of payment firm ex-employees who went on to create, fund or lead prominent technology companies. Botha went to work for Sequoia Capital Management in 2003, ultimately as its managing partner, before leaving the venture capital firm earlier this year.

Sequoia has backed many Musk ventures, investing in SpaceX in 2019 and helping Musk take Twitter, now X, private. Sequoia also is a backer of Musk’s two remaining private ventures, Boring and Neuralink.

Randy Glein Glein officially joined SpaceX’s board in February, but had been involved as an observer since 2009 when his venture capital firm DFJ Growth invested in the company. DFJ also put money into Tesla that same year when the carmaker was in need of capital, and was appointed an observer of the car company as well. His venture capital firm has also invested in Boring and Neuralink, and previously put money into xAI, which was ultimately acquired by SpaceX.

Donald Harrison A SpaceX board member since 2015, Harrison is the director with the least public ties to Musk. He joined the board shortly after Google invested in the company. Harrison still works for Alphabet, leading its corporate partnerships and development team. The company remains one of SpaceX’s key holders, with the second-biggest shareholding after Musk.

Steve Jurvetson Musk has known the venture capitalist since the 1990s, when he pitched an investment in Zip2, the online city guide he co-founded with his brother. Although Jurvetson declined, his venture capital firm DFJ later put money into Tesla and SpaceX, landing him board member seats at both companies in 2009. When allegations of personal misconduct led Jurvetson to leave DFJ in 2017, he took leaves of absence from the board roles, only to return. While he left Tesla’s board in 2020, he’s stayed on at SpaceX.

Luke Nosek Nosek is a longtime Musk ally, going back to the late 1990s as another member of the “PayPal Mafia.”After co-founding PayPal along with Peter Thiel, Nosek launched Founders Fund, which became one of SpaceX’s first institutional backers in 2008, and he’s been on the board since that year. In 2013, Nosek and Musk tried and failed to block Google from acquiring the artificial intelligence lab DeepMind by attempting to pull together a competing offer. Nosek went on to start another venture firm called Gigafund, which has invested in SpaceX, Boring and Neuralink.