Tesla will offer its shareholders the opportunity to invest in artificial intelligence startup xAI, the owner of both companies, Elon Musk, announced on his X platform.

“It’s not up to me… There will be a shareholder vote,” Musk replied to an X user who suggested the electric car maker acquire a stake in xAI.

“If it were up to me, Tesla would have invested in xAI a long time ago,” Musk added.

According to the Wall Street Journal, another Musk company, SpaceX, will invest $2 billion in xAI as part of a $5 billion funding round.

Since xAI was founded in July 2023 and introduced its generative AI assistant Grok, Musk has repeatedly pointed to the potential synergies between xAI, Tesla, and SpaceX.

The businessman is seeking a valuation of xAI between $170 billion and $200 billion in a new round of funding.

The company has invested heavily in a giant data center in Memphis, Tennessee, which Musk claims will become “the most powerful AI training system in the world.” It has also purchased additional land in the area to build more data centers vital to training and operating large-scale AI models.

According to Bloomberg, xAI spends more than $1 billion a month, with its expenses significantly exceeding its revenues.

The AI assistant Grok has been the subject of a number of scandals. After an update on July 7, some of its responses praised Adolf Hitler and implied that people with Jewish surnames spread hatred online.

xAI officially apologized for the offensive responses and announced that it had corrected the instructions that led to these errors, emphasizing that these were unintentionally generated results. | BGNES