Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI could help develop key Tesla initiatives and share in a portion of the electrical automotive maker’s revenue. Sources told the Wall Street Journal.
A proposal presented to investors would allow Tesla to license xAI’s AI models to power Full Self-Driving (FSD), the corporate’s driver assistance software, in addition to a Siri-like voice assistant and the humanoid robot Optimus, the report said.
The amount of revenue Tesla shares with xAI is dependent upon how much of the startup’s technology is used, although xAI has discussed an equal split for FSD, the report added.
xAI representatives also told investors that the corporate is a future provider of critical technologies for Tesla’s software products, sources said. WSJ.
Tesla and xAI didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment.
The discussions a couple of revenue-sharing agreement with Tesla come at a time when xAI has ample capital and is ramping up its own projects.
In May, xAI raised $6 billion from Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, amongst others. And last weekend, xAI launched a brand new supercomputer called Colossus, designed to coach its large language model called Grok, a rival to OpenAI’s GPT-4.
Although Grok is barely available to paying subscribers of Musk’s social media platform X, many Tesla experts consider it would in the future form the factitious intelligence behind Optimus.
Musk himself has considered the prospect of closer ties between xAI and Tesla and said he would discuss a take care of the carmaker’s board in July. potential investment of $5 billion in his AI startup. And on a quarterly earnings call this month, he told analysts that xAI has already been “helpful in advancing autonomous driving and building Tesla’s new data center.”
But Musk’s move to bring his various corporations closer together has drawn controversy amongst some investors and politicians. In June, he admitted that he diverted Nvidia chips designed for training neural networks from Tesla to X and xAI.
“Tesla had no place to send the Nvidia chips to turn them on, so they just sat in a warehouse,” he posted on X.
Musk increasingly sees autonomy as a key to Tesla’s future and has announced that the corporate will invest $10 billion in artificial intelligence this 12 months. The company may even reportedly unveil its highly anticipated robotaxi at an event in October.
Tesla bulls like Ark Investment’s Cathie Wood see robot taxis as a foundation for the corporate’s valuation and potential upside. In July, she predicted that an autonomous taxi platform can be the catalyst for a tenfold increase in Tesla’s stock price.
“Autonomous taxi platforms are the largest AI project currently under development,” she told Bloomberg TV.
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