The last-minute bottle of wine may no longer be enough. From artisan treats and fine linens to seasonal flowers, the best host gifts are small, practical and chosen with genuine thought.
4 min
Conventional wisdom is that if you are invited to someone’s home—or on their yacht or plane—you should thank them with a host gift. Exceptions can include casual get-togethers with close friends or occasions when you’re expressly asked not to.
The best gifts appear effortless, but are chosen with immense consideration. A bottle of wine bought en route to the party, the old standby for many, is no longer one of them.
When choosing a gift, it’s helpful to follow certain parameters: nothing too ostentatious, too hefty or too idiosyncratic in design. At the same time, thinking outside the box can show a deeper level of thoughtfulness. Here’s how to pull it off.
Thom Bettridge, an editor and writer in New York, has a rule of thumb: he only buys gifts that are smaller than a breadbox, to minimize the space that they take up in hosts’ homes. He likes thoughtfully designed playing cards or cookies from a specialty bakery.
Imported sea salt also passes the breadbox test. It’s a gift that Los Angeles fashion designer Zoe Latta often gives to friends. She said fancy salt is always well received because it’s an elevated version of an everyday staple that most people use.
Another small gift—a favorite of Salima Boufelfel, a founder of vintage clothing stores in New York, Paris and Tucson, Ariz.—is Santa Maria Novella’s scented pomegranate, a terracotta vessel that smells like and resembles the fruit. “It scents closets and laundry rooms,” she said.
Part of being a good guest, according to Bettridge, ”is understanding subtle helpfulness.”
When New York City Ballet principal dancer Unity Phelan is invited on a group trip to someone’s home, she and her husband try to stop at a nearby market or farm stand to buy a bounty of fruit and vegetables that everyone can enjoy throughout the stay.
Even if your host seems to have it all, that isn’t a reason to forgo bringing a gift. “People think that ultrahigh net-worth people are buying everything and they are not,” said Kelly Bensimon, the model-turned-reality-TV-star-turned-real-estate-agent.
Thoughtful knickknacks are something that people of any social status can appreciate, Bensimon added. She likes giving dish towels made of fine European linen, which she often gets at Clic, the French homewares boutique with locations in California, New York City, the Hamptons and St. Barts.
“You want to find things that will blend in,” said Latta, the fashion designer. Clear glassware that can be easily mixed with a host’s other cups is a good option, she said.
Fresh flowers, another old standby, endure as a suitable host gift—if you get them from a local florist, not a corner store, and go with seasonal varieties. For a cleaner look, Kaelen Haworth, the owner of a luxury-clothing store in Toronto, likes choosing flowers in a single color or type, not an assortment.
If you’re going with flowers, sometimes it’s better to send them after the fact—for instance, if you’re invited on a private plane. Zachary Weiss, a writer in New York, likes to send orchids to his hosts well after landing. “It comes down to practicality,” he said.
It’s easy to leave gift-buying to the last minute. Stockpiling some trinkets will help you avoid the scramble.
When she’s not giving flowers, Haworth likes to give skin care—specifically from independent brands or products from other countries, which she buys in bulk when she travels. “I went to Greece and bought 15 bottles of a sunscreen they don’t have in the U.S.”
Sometimes, life gets in the way and grabbing wine might be the only alternative to showing up empty-handed. If you’re invited somewhere with your significant other, do as New York ceramist Shane Gabier does and get two bottles of wine—a gesture more generous than showing up with just one.
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Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
