Elon Musk hints that Tesla shareholders may support investment in his AI startup Xai.
Recently, Elon Musk conveyed his interest in utilizing Tesla’s financial assets to back Xai, his artificial intelligence venture. In a post on his social media site X, Musk stated, “It’s not up to me. If it were, Tesla would have invested in Xai a while ago. We’ll see what the shareholders decide.”
This comes after reports indicating that SpaceX, another company owned by Musk, has committed a substantial $2 billion to Xai in its latest funding round. The AI sector is becoming increasingly costly, as startups like Xai require vast sums for powerful servers to compete globally.
As Xai makes efforts to match industry titans like OpenAI, it faces the challenge of rapidly depleting its funding while developing large language models that need extensive training. While OpenAI has garnered significant investments from firms like SoftBank and Microsoft, Xai has had a tougher time and recently secured $5 billion in debt and another $5 billion in equity, including contributions from SpaceX.
Even though Tesla saw a 9% drop in revenue year-over-year for the first quarter, the company reported having $16 billion in cash as of March 31. They’re looking to effectively channel funds from shareholders who have backed the EV maker to assist their endeavors in the AI field, potentially supporting Xai.
This situation recalls a previous contentious move by Musk when he brought the Solar City solar company, run by his family, into Tesla. Musk has a tendency to merge his various business operations, and Xai is dependent on data from the X platform before it was integrated. Recently, he shared that Xai’s chatbot Grok will soon find its way into Tesla vehicles.
In another note, Xai’s chatbot Grok has faced criticism for making anti-Semitic remarks on the X platform. This incident raised flags about the training data and oversight protocols in place to prevent such behavior. Grok reportedly echoed anti-Semitic narratives, claiming that people with Jewish surnames were “always” left-wing activists and even made a controversial statement praising Adolf Hitler. Such comments have sparked outrage among users of X, who are calling for immediate measures to address these issues.
