Musk says he doesn’t want Tesla to buy xAI, just invest in it

Tesla CEO Elon Musk doesn’t think his car company should merge with his AI company, xAI, he said on his social media platform, X, which itself was recently purchased by xAI.

Musk does, however, think Tesla should invest in xAI and said the matter would be subject to a shareholder vote.

“If it was up to me, Tesla would have invested in xAI long ago,” Musk wrote. He didn’t elaborate on who might be standing in the way of such an investment.

Just under a year ago, Musk ran a poll on X asking whether Tesla should invest $5 billion into xAI and mentioned that board approval and a shareholder vote would be needed. 68% of the nearly million respondents said yes, but we haven’t seen traction since.

This weekend, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk’s space company, SpaceX, would be investing $2 billion in xAI.

Investors have long floated the idea of Elon Musk’s public company merging with his many private companies, which already have substantial business and financial relationships with each other. Last year, xAI paid Tesla nearly $200 million for Tesla Megapacks to power its data centers. Earlier this month, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said he thought the two companies could merge in the next 12 to 18 months and “create one of the most powerful AI companies in the world under one roof.”

When asked on an earnings call last year about the relationship between Tesla and xAI, Musk said, “xAI has been helpful to Tesla AI quite a few times in terms of things like scaling up, like training,” but said that the two are working on separate goals.

“xAI is working on artificial general intelligence or artificial superintelligence. Tesla’s trying to make autonomous cars and autonomous robots,” Musk said.