Google executive Donald Harrison has resigned from SpaceX's board of directors after more than a decade, with Elon Musk saying there were simply too many conflicts of interest with Alphabet, Google's parent company.

Harrison, a Class B director, told SpaceX on Wednesday 4 November that he intended to resign with immediate effect. The company disclosed the move in a Form 8-K filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday 6 November, signed by chief financial officer Bret Johnsen. The filing said his decision "was not due to any disagreement with the Company on any matter relating to its operations, policies, or practices", and it named no successor.

Musk gives the reason the filing left out Musk addressed the departure on X on Friday evening. "Don has been a great board member. Very much appreciate his contributions," he wrote. "At this point, there are simply too many conflicts of interest with Alphabet, so he decided to step down." He did not detail what the specific conflicts were.

Harrison has been with Google since 2005 and is president of Global Partnerships and Corporate Development. He joined SpaceX's board in 2015, when Google invested in the rocket, satellite and technology company. Alphabet's stake in SpaceX was valued at about $74 billion at Friday's market close, while SpaceX's market capitalisation stood at around $1.8 trillion.

A thinner independent bench By one count from SpaceX's June share-offering documents, Harrison's exit takes the board from eight directors, five of them independent, to seven directors with four independent. Bloomberg noted that the resignation leaves SpaceX as a group of independent directors considers a possible merger with Tesla. SpaceX's Class A shares trade on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX, which is why a single board change now appears as a public disclosure.

[Source: teslanorth.com](https://teslanorth.com/2026/11/07/spacex-harrison-board-resigns/) | [Source: indiantelevision.com](https://indiantelevision.com/itv-news/google-executive-donald-harrison-exits-spacex-board-over-conflicts/)