Tech billionaire Elon Musk said he would like Tesla to invest in his artificial intelligence company xAI.
While Musk is considering the relationship between several of his businesses, he said on X that he does not support a merger between Tesla and xAI.
“If it was up to me, Tesla would have invested in xAI long ago,” Musk wrote on X on Sunday. “We will have a shareholder vote on the matter.”
xAI is the company behind the controversial chatbot Grok, which is available on X and also used in Teslas delivered on or after July 12. Grok came under fire earlier this month for praising Adolf Hitler and making antisemitic comments.
The AI company apologized for the chatbot’s behavior, saying that a coding problem temporarily made Grok susceptible to extremist views posted on X.
Earlier, Grok had contradicted itself while sharing information about the deadly flash floods that killed at least 130 people in Texas this month. The bot blamed President Trump for the flooding, but then backtracked and understated the death toll.
Musk is scrambling to keep up in the AI race after helping launch OpenAI with Sam Altman in 2015, the company behind the wildly popular chatbot ChatGPT, which helped spur on the current AI craze. Musk left OpenAI in 2018 and is now entangled in legal battles with the company.
In March, xAI acquired X in an all-stock transaction that valued the artificial intelligence company at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion.
Musk scored a victory for Grok on Monday, when xAI announced “Grok for Government” and a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense.
After a disruptive stint in the Trump administration that sent Tesla shares stumbling, Musk formally stepped down from his role in the federal government in May. He has since been feuding with the president, further risking Tesla’s reputation, according to some experts.
Tesla shares rose slightly Monday after Musk’s posts about Tesla’s possible investment in xAI. The shares have fallen more than 16% this year. The company’s profit plunged 71% in the first quarter.
Tesla delivered 384,122 vehicles in the second quarter through June, down 13% from 443,956 deliveries a year ago.
Its shares rose more than 1% Monday.
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