Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has an AI startup called xAI, which reportedly discussed a plan to grant Tesla access to its technology in exchange for a share of Tesla's future software revenue, according to foreign media reports.
On the 7th (local time), The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing multiple anonymous sources, reported, "Tesla will allow xAI's AI model to support the operation of its advanced autonomous driving software, 'Full Self-Driving' (FSD), and share a portion of the resulting revenue with xAI."
Sources said that xAI could also support software development needed for electric vehicle voice assistants or the humanoid robot Optimus, and that the contract terms for revenue sharing between the two companies depend on how much Tesla relies on xAI's technology. One source mentioned that xAI executives discussed an equal split of Tesla's FSD revenue.
WSJ pointed out that in this process, Tesla's revenue and AI development status might be transferred to xAI, noting that CEO Musk is already moving Tesla's personnel and hardware to xAI, raising concerns about conflicts of interest. WSJ also added, "Some Tesla shareholders have filed lawsuits claiming that diverting resources to xAI has harmed investors in the automaker."
However, Musk responded to a post on X (formerly Twitter) summarizing the WSJ report by saying, "I have not read the article, but the above content (about revenue sharing discussions) is not accurate."
Musk added, "Tesla has learned a lot from discussions with xAI engineers, which has helped accelerate achieving autonomous FSD," but also noted that the xAI model is too large to run on Tesla's in-car inference computers and that Tesla does not want it to do so.
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