Musk Refutes Report of xAI Negotiating Tesla Revenue Share
He described the report as "not accurate."
Elon Musk has denied reports suggesting that his artificial intelligence (AI) startup, xAI, is in discussions to receive a share of Tesla's future revenue in exchange for providing access to its technology.[1] The Wall Street Journal reported that Tesla might license xAI’s AI models to enhance its driver-assistance and full self-driving technologies and share some of the resulting revenue with xAI.[2]
Musk responded via his social media platform, X, that Tesla has benefited from discussions with xAI engineers but does not need to license technology from xAI. He described the report as "not accurate."
The Journal's sources claimed that xAI would also contribute to other Tesla features, such as a voice assistant for electric cars and the Optimus humanoid robot software. The proposed revenue-sharing terms would depend on Tesla's use of xAI's technology versus its own, with discussions reportedly considering an even split from the full self-driving revenue.
Haven’t read the article, but the above is not accurate.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 8, 2024
Tesla has learned a lot from discussions with engineers at xAI that have helped accelerate achieving unsupervised FSD, but there is no need to license anything from xAI.
The xAI models are gigantic, containing, in…
Musk, who launched xAI last year to compete with OpenAI, has previously mentioned that xAI could support Tesla’s full self-driving and new data center efforts, and integrate its chatbot, Grok, with Tesla’s software. In July, Musk indicated that Tesla might discuss a $5 billion investment in xAI.
Last month, Elon Musk’s xAI launched Grok-2 and Grok-2 Mini in beta, offering enhanced text analysis, generation capabilities, and image creation features. The new models are available to X Premium and X Premium Plus subscribers.
xAI, founded by Musk last year, raised $6 billion in Series B funding in May, reaching a post-money valuation of $24 billion. Investors in the startup include Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. Musk has indicated plans for a quarter of xAI to be owned by investors in X, the social media firm formerly Twitter, which Musk acquired for $44 billion.
Recently, Tesla shareholders approved a record-breaking pay package for CEO Elon Musk, valued at more than $47 billion. This package, composed of 303 million stock options, was initially dismissed by a Delaware judge earlier this year due to flaws in the approval process.