Musk’s xAI paid Musk’s Tesla nearly $200 million last year

Tesla’s transactions with Elon Musk’s other companies are getting bigger.

Last week while Amazon and Apple were reporting tech earnings, Tesla quietly amended its annual filing to say that the company would no longer be issuing its proxy statement within 120 days of the end of its fiscal calendar year (that night) because its board hadn’t yet picked a date for the company’s shareholder meeting. It did, however, include some of the information normally found in that proxy statement in the amendment, including related-party transactions.

Often the most interesting part of a company’s annual proxy statement, that section is where companies are required to list business arrangements with individuals or entities that might pose a conflict of interest. That’s especially the case for Tesla, whose CEO Musk also runs four other companies — SpaceX, The Boring Co., Neuralink, and the combined X and xAI — and who has a habit of funneling money between them.

The interconnection of Musk’s companies and himself is getting even more entrenched.

The newest addition to this section is also its biggest. Last year, xAI paid $198.3 million to Tesla, the vast majority of which went to the purchase of Tesla Megapacks, battery storage systems that help power xAI’s data centers.

For context, last year Tesla’s energy generation and storage segment brought in about $10 billion in revenue, so the xAI payments account for nearly 2% of that. This filing was the first where Tesla mentioned transactions with xAI, which was founded in 2023.

Unlike Tesla’s car business, which shrunk last year, Tesla’s energy business is growing rapidly and more profitable.

Tesla’s relationships with other related companies are getting cozier, too.

From 2023 to 2024, SpaceX’s payments to Tesla for commercial, licensing, and support agreements grew from $2.1 million to $2.4 million. In that time, Tesla’s payments to SpaceX for Musk’s jet use grew from $700,000 to $800,000.

Tesla’s payments to X for commercial, consulting, and support agreements doubled from $50,000 to $100,000 from 2023 to 2024. Tesla also paid X $400,000 for advertising in 2024, while previously Tesla had paid X $200,000 for ads through February 2024.

Tesla increased its spending with The Boring Company to $3.6 million last year from $200,000 in 2023 — money that likely went toward a tunnel that connects the Texas factory where Cybertrucks are produced to their loading lot.

Last year, Tesla made $30.3 million selling scrap to Redwood Materials, a company that’s owned by Tesla cofounder and board member JB Straubel, up from $11.5 million in 2023. Tesla also paid $300,000 to Musk’s brother’s company, Nova Sky Stories, for a drone show. Tesla paid Musk’s own security company $2.8 million for security services in 2024, up from $2.4 million a year earlier.