Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has started a poll on social media platform X to gauge interest in whether the electric carmaker should invest $5 billion in his artificial intelligence startup xAI. He mentioned that both board approval and a shareholder vote would be needed for such an investment.
The poll comes after Tesla posted its lowest profit margin in five years, which was attributed to price cuts and increased spending on AI projects. Early votes in the poll showed that most people were in favour of the investment.
During Tesla’s earnings conference call, Elon Musk mentioned that xAI would help advance full self-driving and build up the new Tesla data centre. He also noted that there are opportunities to integrate xAI’s chatbot, Grok, with Tesla’s software.
Nearly 3 hours after the poll was posted, approximately 386,000 people had participated, with 70% voting in favour of the investment.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment, while xAI could not be reached for comment.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, launched xAI last year with the hope of creating an alternative to ChatGPT. The startup raised $6 billion in a Series B funding round in May, leading to a post-money valuation of $24 billion. Notable backers of the venture include Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital.
The Tesla CEO has stated his intention for a quarter of xAI to be owned by investors in X, previously known as Twitter. He bought X for $44 billion, but the social media firm’s value has declined significantly.
During the earnings call, Elon Musk dismissed concerns that he may be diverting resources from Tesla to his other companies.
In June, CNBC reported that he had instructed Nvidia to send thousands of AI chips meant for Tesla to xAI and X because Tesla’s data centre was full and there was no space for the chips.
Additionally, Elon Musk frequently polls on Twitter. In 2021, he asked users whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stake and began selling shares shortly after the poll.