• Elon Musk refutes claims of Tesla sharing future revenue with his AI startup, xAI.
• Musk stated that while discussions with xAI have been beneficial, there's no need for Tesla to license anything from them.
• The Wall Street Journal's report suggested that xAI would support the development of features for Tesla, including a voice assistant and software for its humanoid robot, Optimus.
• Despite the potential benefits of a collaboration between Tesla and xAI, Musk's denial puts the situation in question.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has recently dismissed reports suggesting that his artificial intelligence startup, xAI, is in discussions about sharing future Tesla revenue. This denial comes in response to a report that proposed Tesla would gain access to xAI's technology and resources in exchange for a share in its future revenue.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that Tesla was planning to license xAI's artificial intelligence models. These models would be used to enhance Tesla's driver-assistance software and full self-driving (FSD) technology.

Musk Denies Licensing Agreement with xAI

Musk took to his social media platform X late on Saturday to deny these claims. He stated, Tesla has learned a lot from discussions with engineers at xAI that have helped accelerate achieving unsupervised FSD, but there is no need to license anything from xAI. He further added that the report was not accurate.

The Wall Street Journal's report, which cited unnamed sources familiar with the matter, also suggested that xAI would support the development of other features for Tesla. These features include a voice assistant in its electric cars and software to power its humanoid robot, Optimus.

The report further stated that the terms of any revenue-sharing agreement between xAI and Tesla would depend on how extensively Tesla relied on xAI's technology as opposed to its own. It was also mentioned that xAI executives have discussed an even revenue split from Tesla's FSD.

Musk launched xAI last year to compete with Microsoft-backed OpenAI. This move sparked concerns that he might allocate some resources of the automaker to the AI company.

Musk's Past Controversies and Future Plans

Musk has previously stated that xAI would be helpful in advancing full self-driving and in building up the new Tesla data center. He also mentioned opportunities to integrate xAI's chatbot, Grok, with Tesla's software. In July, Musk revealed that he and the Tesla board would discuss a $5 billion investment in xAI. However, xAI could not be reached for a comment regarding the recent reports.

This is not the first time Musk has been involved in such controversies. In the past, he has been known to challenge reports and rumors about his companies. For instance, he has previously debunked reports about Tesla licensing AI models from xAI. He stated that Tesla's real-world AI has a vastly larger context size than an LLM, as the combined video history from all cameras is several gigabytes in size.

In another instance, Musk ordered Nvidia to ship thousands of AI chips reserved for Tesla to X and xAI. Nvidia, the third-most-valuable company in the world with a $2.8 trillion market cap, has said it's hard to keep up with demand. Between the cloud service providers and the companies developing AI models, customers are consuming every GPU that's out there, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on an earnings call in May.