Elon Musk launches poll asking if Tesla should invest $5 billion in xAI
Elon Musk has initiated a poll on the social media platform X to gauge whether Tesla should invest $5 billion in his AI startup, xAI. While board and shareholder approval is required, Musk's poll aims to "test the waters" for potential investment.
At the same time, Tesla is experiencing its lowest profit margin in five years due to price cuts and heightened AI project spending. During the earnings call, Musk mentioned plans to integrate xAI’s chatbot, Grok, with Tesla's software, and highlighted xAI's role in advancing full self-driving technology and building a new Tesla data center. As reported, Tesla intends to focus on profits from its hardware, accelerated by AI, software, and fleet-based services.
By 0234 GMT, over 322,000 users had participated in the poll, with 70.2% supporting the investment, and the poll will conclude within a day. Elon Musk founded xAI last year to compete with OpenAI and Google's ChatGPT, and the startup raised $6 billion in May through series B funding, backed by investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. It now holds a valuation of $24 billion.
Previous concerns about Musk possibly diverting resources from Tesla to other ventures were addressed during the earnings call. He refuted these claims, emphasizing no overlap threatening any of his projects. Notably, in June, Musk ordered Nvidia chips to be redirected to xAI and X due to Tesla's full data center. Additionally, Musk's repeated use of polls on social media includes his 2021 inquiry about selling 10% of his Tesla shares, which he acted upon shortly after.
As of early voting, nearly 386,000 individuals had participated, with 70% favoring the $5 billion investment in xAI. Tesla and xAI have not responded to comments from Reuters. Musk also mentioned that a quarter of xAI might be owned by X investors, despite X’s valuation decline since Musk purchased it for $44 billion.
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