More than two-thirds of the nearly 960,000 voting users support Tesla's investment of $5 billion in xAI, an artificial intelligence startup company, according to a vote initiated by Elon Musk on the social media platform "X" (formerly Twitter). During the earnings call, Musk also "maintained" the AI startup, stating that "Tesla has learned a lot from xAI," which has helped advance the development of the FSD system.
On Thursday morning, Peking time (July 25th), Elon Musk's poll on social media platform "X" (formerly known as Twitter) ended.
The results show that more than two-thirds (67.9%) of the nearly 960,000 voting users support Tesla's investment of $5 billion in the artificial intelligence startup company xAI. One year ago, Tesla CEO Musk founded xAI in his personal capacity.
When creating the vote, Musk explained that this was just a "temperature check" and emphasized that the final decision would require board approval and shareholder approval to land. Given Tesla's disappointing performance report and stock trends, this investment plan is particularly sensitive.
According to the Q2 earnings report released after the close of trading on Tuesday, revenue from Tesla's automotive business fell 7% year-on-year, and the company's net income fell 45% year-on-year. On Wednesday, Tesla's stock price fell 12.33%, the first single-day drop of this magnitude since September 2020, and its market value also fell below US$700 billion.
During the earnings call, Musk also "maintained" this AI startup, saying that "Tesla has learned a lot from xAI," which has helped advance the development of the "fully autonomous driving" (FSD) system. Musk said at the time that if shareholders approve, he supports Tesla's idea of investing in xAI.
However, many Tesla shareholders have been dissatisfied with this AI company since its establishment. Firstly, some AI experts have left Tesla to join xAI. In April, Musk admitted that Tesla had made some additional efforts to retain talent.
In June of this year, some media exposed an email within Nvidia, stating that Musk had already delivered a large amount of rare AI chips reserved for Tesla to the social media platform X. Given that the investors of X company own 25% of xAI, it was speculated that these chips might be used for xAI.
At the time, Musk tweeted back to Nvidia CEO Huang Renxun in anger and responded that Tesla didn't send Nvidia chips anywhere else but just left them in the warehouse. However, these statements did not quell shareholders' concerns.
Prior to the Tesla Shareholders Meeting in June, the Shareholders Alliance urged other shareholders to reject the Board's proposed compensation plan in an open letter. The Shareholders Alliance believes that Musk's control of five companies, including X Platform (Twitter), has distracted him and prevented him from serving the best interests of the automaker.
In addition, Musk promised "autonomous driving technology is just around the corner" eight years ago, but the company has not yet established most of the infrastructure needed to launch such a service, nor has it obtained approval from US regulators.
Earlier this year, Musk announced that he would launch Robotaxi (self-driving taxis) on August 8th, which helped pushed the stock price up to nearly a 10-month high. But after the official announcement that Robotaxi would be postponed until October, the stock price retreated by more than half of its recent gains.
Analyst Jeff Osborne from Cowen said during the earnings call, "All the visions expressed by Musk, except for energy storage, are products that do not yet exist."
UBS reiterated its "sell" rating on the stock. UBS analyst Joseph Spak wrote that Tesla is still far from the return on AI.
Editor/Lambor