SpaceX puts $2B into xAI as Grok lands in Tesla vehicles

Elon Musk said on Monday that he has no intention of combining Tesla with his artificial intelligence company xAI, after a Tesla investor on X asked if they’d support a merger between the two. Elon gave a one-word answer: “No.”

The comment was made directly in response to a post by @BullStreetBets_, and it comes at a time when questions are building around how tightly he plans to link his different businesses.

This is happening as Elon looks to deepen the ties between Tesla and xAI without formally merging them. Overnight, he also floated the idea of a Tesla shareholder vote that would decide if the car company should invest in xAI.

That vote hasn’t been scheduled yet, and no official terms have been released. But it echoes a 2023 poll Elon posted on X, where he asked if Tesla should invest $5 billion into xAI. Most of the voters said yes.

SpaceX puts $2B into xAI as Grok lands in Tesla vehicles

Since leaving his advisory role under U.S. President Donald Trump, Elon has been moving fast to pull his companies closer. One of the biggest steps was taken in March, when he merged xAI with social media platform X. That deal valued xAI at $80 billion, while X was tagged at $33 billion.

And the connections haven’t stopped there. Just last week, Elon said Tesla’s vehicles will now feature Grok, the chatbot built by xAI. Grok has stirred up major backlash after it was caught generating antisemitic messages and even praising Adolf Hitler.

Following public outrage, xAI posted an apology on Saturday, admitting to what it called the “horrific behavior” caused by the AI and claiming that fixes had been made to prevent it from happening again.

That same day, The Wall Street Journal reported that Elon’s aerospace company SpaceX has invested $2 billion into xAI. The money is part of a bigger $10 billion debt and equity raise that was first outlined by Morgan Stanley. The Journal said the information came from people with knowledge of the deal. When contacted, neither xAI nor SpaceX commented.

xAI is currently in the middle of an infrastructure sprint as it continues to train and improve Grok 4, its latest chatbot model. Elon’s company has described Grok as “the world’s smartest artificial intelligence” and “the most intelligent AI to date.” That claim was evaluated by Artificial Analysis, which said Grok 4 was of “higher quality compared to average.”

The new model is core to xAI’s push to compete against both fresh AI startups and legacy firms already struggling under the high costs of training large models. Elon’s plan doesn’t involve folding his companies into one another, but he’s making sure they all speak the same language. And whether that comes with shareholder approval or not, the financial links between Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI are growing by the day.

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