(Bloomberg) — Elon Musk confirmed he will buy artificial intelligence chips from Tesla Inc. had diverted to his X Corp. and xAI Corp. companies, explaining both the redirected transmission and internal Nvidia Corp. emails. that cast doubt on the automaker’s purchasing plans.
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In a series of posts Tuesday on X, Musk wrote that Tesla had no place to put Nvidia chips where they could be turned on. CNBC previously reported that the billionaire had diverted 12,000 of the chipmaker’s H100 graphics processing units originally planned for Tesla to X, citing an Nvidia memo from December.
In another email viewed by CNBC in late April, Nvidia officials said Musk made statements during the automaker’s first-quarter earnings call and at X that conflicted with the company’s bookings with the chipmaker.
Tesla’s CEO said during the April 23 earnings call that about 35,000 of the company’s H100s were active, and he expected the electric vehicle maker to have about 85,000 working by the end of the year. On April 28, he wrote on X that Tesla will spend about $10 billion on AI this year.
Musk suggested in one of his posts on Tuesday that Nvidia might not be able to track all the money Tesla spends on AI this year, writing that about half of its spending will be internal. The company is working on its own supercomputer as part of broader efforts to develop self-driving technology. It is also purchasing sensors for all its cars, regardless of whether consumers pay extra for the more advanced driver assistance system.
“My current best estimate for Nvidia purchases by Tesla is $3 billion to $4 billion this year,” Musk wrote.
Following CNBC’s report, Tesla shares erased gains in early trading and fell as much as 1.3% after the open. The stock is down about 30% this year.
Musk’s plans to develop AI within Tesla have come under increased scrutiny since he threatened in January to take that work elsewhere unless he gains about 25% voting control of the EV maker. Weeks after he made that demand, a Delaware court overturned the compensation package that would have awarded him tens of billions of dollars in stock options and increased his stake in the automaker. Tesla shareholders will vote on the wage agreement again at the annual meeting on June 13.
Musk ordered Tesla’s largest ever layoffs earlier this year and is betting his future on developing self-driving vehicles. Although the idea of offering an autonomous taxi service has been kicking around the company for at least eight years, Tesla has yet to keep much of the infrastructure it needs in place, and has not yet received regulatory approval to test robotaxis on public roads.
The billionaire acquired X, the company formerly known as Twitter, for $44 billion in late 2022 and founded xAI the following year. The two companies are closely linked, with Musk saying late last year that investors in The latter company announced last month that it had raised $6 billion.
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