Donald Harrison, a Google executive who has sat on SpaceX’s board since February 2015, has resigned, SpaceX said in an 8-K filing on Friday, 6 November. The filing says Harrison, a Class B Director, notified the company on 4 November of “his intention to resign as a member of the Board of Directors (the “Board”), effective immediately”, and that his decision “was not due to any disagreement with the Company on any matter relating to its operations, policies, or practices”.
He leaves as Alphabet’s own filing shows how large Google’s position is. Alphabet’s 13F for the quarter ended 30 September lists 555,043,560 SpaceX Class A shares valued at $83.73 billion. At SpaceX’s 5 November Nasdaq close of $123.62, the same shares were worth about $68.6 billion, about 18% less, by our arithmetic.
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The key insight: As we read SpaceX’s 8-K and its June S-1/A, a Google executive who has sat on SpaceX’s board since 2015 has left it in the same week Alphabet’s filing put its SpaceX shares at $83.73 billion; the 8-K gives no reason beyond saying there was no disagreement.
The 8-K is filed under Item 5.02 and is signed by chief financial officer Bret Johnsen. It says “The Company and the Board express their deep appreciation to Mr. Harrison for his many contributions and his years of dedicated and outstanding service to the Company”. It does not name a successor, and it does not say whether Google will be represented on the board.
SpaceX’s June S-1/A describes Harrison as “President, Global Partnerships and Corporate Development at Google LLC, a technology company, since 2017”, after serving as Google’s vice-president of corporate development from 2012 to 2017. The same filing lists him with Elon Musk, Gwynne Shotwell, Antonio J. Gracias and Luke Nosek as the initial Class B Directors, the seats that holders of SpaceX’s Class B common stock elect on their own, under the charter’s rule that Class B holders elect 51% of the board.
The S-1/A also lists entities affiliated with Google among the existing investors party to SpaceX’s Amended and Restated Investors’ Rights Agreement, dated 4 August 2020.
Value of Alphabet’s 555,043,560 SpaceX Class A shares: $83.73 billion in its 13F for the quarter ended 30 September, and about $68.6 billion at SpaceX’s $123.62 Nasdaq close on 5 November 2026 (our arithmetic).
What Was Posted on X
@SawyerMerritt Don has been a great board member. Very much appreciate his contributions.
At this point, there are simply too many conflicts of interest with Alphabet, so he decided to step down.
Elon Musk’s reply at 01:46 UTC on 7 November to Sawyer Merritt’s post about SpaceX’s announcement: “At this point, there are simply too many conflicts of interest with Alphabet, so he decided to step down.” The 8-K says the decision was not due to any disagreement with the company on its operations, policies or practices.
The Size of Google’s Position
We reported Alphabet’s 13F line on the same day in Google Parent’s New $548M Qualcomm Stake Fell $81M by Nov. 5: the SpaceX holding was $83.73 billion, 94.8% of the $88.35 billion of positions the filing lists. SpaceX closed at $141.31 on 3 November and $123.62 on 5 November, the session after the midterm vote.
Update, 6 Nov, 23:26 UTC: Bloomberg says independent directors are weighing a Tesla merger.Bloomberg reported that Harrison’s resignation leaves SpaceX “as a group of independent directors consider a potential merger with Tesla Inc.” and noted that he told the company of his intention to resign on 4 November, “one day after the US midterm election.” For the merger background, see A SpaceX-Tesla Deal Could Vest Musk’s $110B of Tesla Stock.
SpaceX’s June S-1/A said its board would consist of eight directors at the offering and named five of them as independent under Nasdaq rules: Ira Ehrenpreis, Randy Glein, Donald Harrison, Steve Jurvetson and Luke Nosek. By our arithmetic, if no other change has been made since that filing, Harrison’s exit leaves seven directors, four of them independent, down from five of eight. The 8-K does not name a replacement.
Update, 7 Nov, 05:20 UTC: Musk cites “conflicts of interest with Alphabet”. Replying at 01:46 UTC on 7 November to a post by Sawyer Merritt about SpaceX’s announcement of the resignation, Elon Musk wrote: “Don has been a great board member. Very much appreciate his contributions. At this point, there are simply too many conflicts of interest with Alphabet, so he decided to step down.”
These are two different accounts. SpaceX’s 8-K says the decision “was not due to any disagreement with the Company on any matter relating to its operations, policies, or practices”; Musk’s post gives conflicts of interest with Alphabet as the reason. Neither names the conflicts. Bloomberg’s report on the Tesla merger review is in the Update above. We did not see a statement from Harrison or Google.
As we read the S-1/A, Harrison was one of five Class B Directors, the seats SpaceX’s Class B holders elect on their own, alongside Musk, Shotwell, Gracias and Nosek.
As we read Alphabet’s 13F and Nasdaq’s closes, the 555,043,560 shares went from $83.73 billion at 30 September to about $68.6 billion at the 5 November close, about 18% lower, by our arithmetic.
As we read the filing, it names no successor and says nothing about whether Google will keep a seat.
SpaceX 8-K, filed 6 November 2026
“Mr. Harrison’s decision to resign was not due to any disagreement with the Company on any matter relating to its operations, policies, or practices.”
Three Implications
FOR SPACEX The 8-K reports one Class B board seat vacated and names no successor.
FOR ALPHABET Its 13F lists 555,043,560 SpaceX Class A shares, 94.8% of the value of the positions the filing lists, as we reported.
FOR READERS The filing does not say why Harrison resigned beyond stating there was no disagreement; we did not see a Google statement.
The framework says: “The diagonals where dominance concentrates are where the supercycle’s profit pools live.”
As we read it, Alphabet’s SpaceX holding is 94.8% of the value its 13F lists, a concentrated position in a single company. The framework predates the filing and does not discuss it.
What Is Not Established
The filing gives no reason for the resignation beyond stating it was not due to a disagreement, and it does not say whether Harrison remains at Google or whether a replacement director will be appointed. We did not see a statement from Google or Harrison. The 13F value is as of 30 September; the 5 November value is our arithmetic at that day’s close.
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A Google executive who joined SpaceX’s board in February 2015 has left it, according to SpaceX’s 8-K, with no disagreement cited. Alphabet’s SpaceX shares, $83.73 billion at the end of September, were worth about $68.6 billion at the 5 November close.
A note on sourcing. The resignation and the board’s statement are from SpaceX’s 6 November 8-K; Harrison’s Googletitle, the Class B director list and the investors’ rights agreement are from SpaceX’s June S-1/A. The share count and the $83.73 billion value are from Alphabet’s 13F; the $68.6 billion figure is our arithmetic at Nasdaq’s 5 November close. We did not contact Google, SpaceX or Mr. Harrison.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
