The CEO Elon Musk asked NVIDIA to send 12,000 NVIDIA H100 artificial intelligence processors to his companies X and xAI instead of Tesla. Emails from NVIDIA on this matter also indirectly indicate an exaggerated picture of Tesla's purchases, as reported by CNBC.
Earlier, Elon Musk said that he could make Tesla a "leader in artificial intelligence and robotics". This, he said, will require many expensive NVIDIA processors. During a phone call with Tesla about first-quarter earnings in April, Musk said that the company will increase the number of H100 chips from 35,000 to 85,000 by the end of this year. A few days later, he also wrote in a note to X that this year Tesla will spend $10 billion "on combined learning and artificial intelligence".
But emails from senior NVIDIA personnel circulating within the company suggest that Musk provided shareholders with an exaggerated picture of Tesla's purchases. Correspondence from NVIDIA also indicates that Musk redirected a significant batch of artificial intelligence chips, which were reserved for Tesla, to X and xAI. Tesla's stock fell 1% after this news.
With his request, Musk delayed the receipt of over $500 million by the car manufacturer for graphics processors for at least several months, which will likely lead to a delay in planned work and research. The new information also highlights the escalation of conflict between Musk and some Tesla shareholders, who doubt whether he will fulfill his commitments while managing a number of other companies and reallocating funds between them. It is worth noting that it is Tesla that provides Musk with the largest part of his wealth.
Companies X and xAI are closely intertwined. In November, Musk wrote: "X Corp investors will own 25% of xAI". In addition, xAI uses certain processing power in X data centers to train and operate the Grok chatbot.
Tesla shareholders indeed have reasons to be concerned. The company is experiencing a troubling decline in sales, partly due to the aging model lineup of electric cars and increasing competition. Its reputation has also suffered in the U.S., according to the Axios Harris Poll 100 survey, which attributes the decline to Musk's "antics" and political statements. Overall this year, Tesla's stock has fallen by 29%.
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