Tesla CEO Elon Musk has launched a poll on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, asking fans if the electric vehicle company should invest USD 5 billion in his artificial intelligence business, xAI.
The survey was released by the billionaire CEO, who oversees Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Co., Neuralink, X Corp., and now xAI, shortly after the end of Tesla’s second-quarter results call on Tuesday night.
Specifically, he asked: “Should Tesla invest $5B into @xAI, assuming the valuation is set by several credible outside investors? (Board approval & shareholder vote are needed, so this is just to test the waters)”
In a May Series B fundraising round led by Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz, xAI raised $6 billion.
The company’s valuation increased to $24 billion as a result of the investment round, over the $18 billion estimate. Grok, a chatbot created by the firm, is viewed as a rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Musk launched the poll, which attracted over 386,000 participants in only three hours and revealed a solid 70% of respondents in favour of the suggested investment.
Musk quickly clarified, though, that the purpose of this poll is only “to test the waters,” adding that in order for such investment to become a reality, board approval as well as a shareholder vote would be required.
This possible action fits well with Tesla’s current initiatives to integrate AI and autonomous driving.
Potential synergies between xAI and Tesla were emphasised by Musk during the most recent Tesla earnings call.
He said that xAI might be “helpful in advancing full self-driving and in building up the new Tesla data centre.”
Additionally, he alluded to the potential integration of Tesla’s software ecosystem with xAI’s chatbot, Grok.
We earlier reported that Elon Musk’s start-up xAI reportedly cancelled a prospective $10 billion contract with Oracle to rent cloud servers from the software giant to create its AI-training infrastructure.
