(Reuters) – Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company XAI has held talks about a stake in Tesla’s future revenue in exchange for giving Musk’s electric carmaker access to XAI’s technology and resources, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
Tesla will license xAI’s AI models to help power its full self-driving technology and share some of that revenue with the startup, according to the proposed arrangement as explained to investors, the newspaper said.
xAI will also support the development of other features for Tesla, including a voice assistant in its electric cars and software to operate the Optimus humanoid robot, the newspaper said, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.
The terms of any revenue-sharing agreement between xAI and Tesla would depend in part on how much Tesla relies on xAI’s technology rather than its own, the report said, adding that xAI executives have discussed an equal split of revenue from Tesla’s FSD.
Tesla did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment, while xAI could not be reached.
Musk launched xAI last year to compete with Microsoft-backed OpenAI, raising concerns that he might divert some of the automaker’s resources to the AI company.
He said xAI would be “instrumental in advancing full self-driving and in building Tesla’s new data center,” adding that there were opportunities to integrate xAI’s chatbot, Grok, into Tesla’s software.
In July, the billionaire CEO said he and Tesla’s board would discuss a $5 billion investment in xAI.