Elon Musk has denied reports that one of his companies, Tesla, is in talks to split revenue with another company, xAI, and allow it to use the startup's AI models.
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that, according to a draft deal outlined to investors, Tesla will use the xAI model for its driver assistance software (FSD, or Full Self-Driving). The AI startup will also help develop software for Tesla's voice assistant in cars and for its humanoid robot, Optimus.
Musk wrote on his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) that he had not read the WSJ article, but called the post summarizing it “not accurate.”
“Tesla has learned a lot from discussions with xAI engineers that have helped accelerate the realization of unsupervised FSD, but has not had to license anything from xAI,” he wrote. “xAI models are huge, contain most of human knowledge in compressed form, and are impossible to run on Tesla's vehicle inference computers, nor are they willing to do so.”
Musk founded xAI as a competitor to OpenAI (which he co-founded but ultimately left). TechCrunch reported earlier this year that as part of xAI's pitch for a $6 billion funding round, the startup outlined a vision for training models on data from Musk's various companies (Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink and X) that would then improve those companies' technologies.
Tesla shareholders are suing Musk over his decision to found xAI, alleging that he essentially diverted talent and resources from Tesla to a competitor.
I haven't read the article but the above is not accurate.
Tesla has learned a lot from discussions with xAI engineers and accelerated the realization of unsupervised FSD, but without needing to license anything from xAI.
The xAI model is huge and includes:
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 8, 2024