Elon Musk recently denied reports suggesting that Tesla had discussed sharing revenue with his other company, xAI. The Wall Street Journal had claimed that a proposed agreement would involve Tesla utilizing xAI models in its driver-assistance software and collaborating on various features for Tesla vehicles and the humanoid robot Optimus.
Musk took to his social media platform X to address the situation, stating that he had not read the WSJ article but found the summary “not accurate.” He mentioned that while Tesla had benefited from discussions with xAI engineers, the idea of licensing anything from xAI was unnecessary. According to Musk, xAI’s models are vast and contain an abundance of knowledge, making them unsuitable for running on Tesla’s vehicle inference computer.
Elon Musk founded xAI as a direct competitor to OpenAI, a company he co-founded but later departed from. Reports earlier this year outlined a proposal during xAI’s $6 billion funding round, detailing a vision where the startup’s models would be trained on data from Musk’s various ventures, including Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and X. The goal was to enhance technology across all of these enterprises through xAI’s AI models.
Despite Musk’s intentions, Tesla shareholders have taken legal action against him for initiating xAI. They argue that by establishing xAI, Musk has redirected talent and resources away from Tesla towards what effectively amounts to a competing business entity.
While the idea of sharing revenue between Tesla and xAI may have been speculated upon, Elon Musk has made it clear that no such arrangement exists. The denial by Musk sheds light on the complexities of running multiple innovative companies simultaneously and the challenges that can arise when attempting to collaborate across these entities. Only time will tell how this situation unfolds and the impact it may have on Musk’s various ventures.