Musk Denies Tesla Revenue Sharing with xAI
Entrepreneur Elon Musk has firmly denied claims suggesting that Tesla was in talks to utilize AI models from his tech startup xAI, with the intention of sharing any resultant revenue. This statement follows a report on September 8, which hinted at possible discussions surrounding a deal between the billionaire’s two companies.
The report suggested that Tesla was contemplating licensing xAI’s advanced AI models for incorporation into its Full Self-Driving (FSD) suite of features. Additionally, there were mentions of potentially developing other functionalities for Tesla, such as a Siri-like voice assistant and software support for the Optimus humanoid robot. The specifics of any revenue-sharing arrangement were said to depend on the extent to which xAI’s technology was applied.
However, Musk disputed these claims, stating that he had not read the article but described any posts summarizing the content as “inaccurate.” According to Musk, while Tesla has benefited significantly from discussions with xAI developers—which helped accelerate progress towards achieving unsupervised FSD—there is no necessity to license any technology from the startup. He emphasized that xAI’s models are overwhelmingly large, encapsulating much of human knowledge in a compressed form. These models, Musk noted, cannot operate on Tesla’s car computers, nor would there be any desire to attempt such integration.
Furthermore, in a direct comment, Musk labeled the report as “nonsense,” reiterating that there was no truth to the assertions made about the relationship between Tesla and xAI.
This revelation comes amid ongoing legal challenges for Tesla’s CEO. Earlier, Tesla’s shareholders had initiated a lawsuit against Musk and the board of directors, citing concerns over the billionaire’s decision to establish xAI. The lawsuit reflects the broader apprehension among investors about the potential implications of Musk’s expansive ventures on Tesla’s core business.
In a significant development for the AI startup, xAI launched Colossus, the largest artificial intelligence training cluster, which employs 100,000 Nvidia H100 graphics processors. This move underscores xAI’s ambitions and its ongoing efforts to push the boundaries of AI technology.
