Tesla shareholders will be asked to vote on a potential investment in Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI, the chief executive said late Sunday.
“It’s not up to me. If it was up to me, Tesla would have invested in xAI long ago,” Musk wrote in a post on X. “We will have a shareholder vote on the matter.”
Musk’s comments came just days after the Financial Times reported that xAI was preparing to raise fresh capital at a valuation as high as $200 billion — nearly ten times its value early last year, according to people familiar with the matter.
“These rumors are false,” Musk wrote in response to the FT report last Friday. “xAI is not seeking funding right now. We have plenty of capital.”
The billionaire also rejected speculation about a merger between Tesla and xAI. Responding to a post asking Tesla investors whether they supported such a deal, Musk replied simply: “No.”
Founded in 2023, xAI was launched shortly after the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed AI developer that Musk helped co-found and later parted ways with.
Last week, xAI released the fourth version of its Grok chatbot, which is integrated with Musk’s social media platform X and is now being deployed in Tesla vehicles as part of a new software update.
“@Grok now available directly in your Tesla,” the automaker said in a post on Saturday, referring to its 2025.26 software update.
The rollout includes a beta version of the generative AI assistant and also features upgrades to Tesla’s infotainment, lighting, charging, and dashcam systems.
According to xAI, Grok 4 is capable of “advanced reasoning,” “coding assistance,” and “visual processing and image generation” — with the image generation feature set to be available from October.
The latest Grok launch coincided with the resignation of X CEO Linda Yaccarino, who announced her departure earlier this week after two years in the role.
In March, Musk disclosed that xAI had acquired X in an all-stock deal valuing the AI firm at $80 billion and X at $33 billion, excluding $12 billion in debt.
“Since its founding two years ago, xAI has rapidly become one of the leading AI labs in the world, building models and data centers at unprecedented speed and scale,” he said.
