Elon Musk has debunked the claims of a recent Wall Street Journal report which suggested that Tesla and xAI have discussed a potential deal where the electric vehicle maker would license the AI startup’s models to help develop technologies such as Full Self-Driving (FSD). As per Musk, there is no need for Tesla to license anything from xAI.
Citing people reportedly familiar with the matter, the WSJ noted that the proposed deal between Tesla and xAI has been described to investors. With the deal in place, Tesla would reportedly license xAI’s artificial intelligence models to help power FSD. Tesla would then share some of FSD’s revenue with xAI.
The Journal’s report also alleged that xAI would be developing other features for Tesla’s vehicles, such as a Siri-esque voice assistant and the software that would power Optimus, the company’s humanoid robot.
NEWS: Elon Musk’s AI startup @xAI has discussed a deal where it would get some @Tesla revenue in exchange for providing the carmaker access to its technology and resources, the latest example of the growing interconnectedness of Musk’s companies.
Under a proposed arrangement as… pic.twitter.com/SBmlOT3qRU— ALEX (@ajtourville) September 8, 2024
In a post on X, Musk noted that while he has not fully read the WSJ report and all its points, the article’s overall claim is inaccurate. Musk admitted that Tesla has learned a lot from discussions with xAI’s engineers, but there is really no need to license anything from the AI startup.
Musk also explained that there are massive differences between the AI models that are being developed by xAI and Tesla. xAI’s models are gigantic and could not possibly run on Tesla’s electric vehicles, while the EV maker’s models have incredibly dense intelligence since they are focused on real-world driving.
“Haven’t read the article, but the above is not accurate. 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.
Haven’t read the article, but the above is not accurate.
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.
The xAI models are gigantic, containing, in…— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 8, 2024
“The xAI models are gigantic, containing, in compressed form, most of human knowledge, and couldn’t possibly run on the Tesla vehicle inference computer, nor would we want them to. The Tesla AI models have incredibly “dense” (in a good way, lol) intelligence, as they compress video of reality into driving commands, but must operate on a ~300W computer with memory size and bandwidth far lower than, say, an H100 GPU.
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“Tesla real-world AI also has a vastly larger context size than an LLM, as the combined video history from all cameras is several gigabytes in size,” Musk wrote.
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Elon Musk is, in many respects, one of the biggest and most influential figures in modern-day artificial intelligence.
Given that Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI are all looked at in their respective fields as leaders to an extent, each of them has a heavy influence on the future of AI, even though two of them are not thought of, at face value, as AI companies.
Musk has grand expectations for what is to come with AI, not only as a form of assistance to make human lives easier, but to make humans multiplanetary and solve some of the biggest issues that face us today. But even he is astounded by AI’s pace of progress.
He believes that in two years, AI will be so mind-blowing it might be unrecognizable.
Given that AI from 2 years ago feels so old that it should be in a museum, then obviously AI 2 years from now will be mind-blowing https://t.co/TcsKZ8o8OE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2026
This progress can be seen in a variety of ways, but perhaps the most popular way people have shown AI’s progress, especially on social media, is through an incredibly arbitrary way of watching Will Smith eat spaghetti:
The progression in AI of Will Smith eating spaghetti (2023 – 2026) pic.twitter.com/VDv82mB5gs
— internet hall of fame (@InternetH0F) February 10, 2026
This is a great way to show people how AI is improving, especially from a perspective that examines how it can manufacture images and video from prompts. AI is an incredibly complex concept, however, and it goes much deeper than Will Smith eating Italian food.
Musk’s most widely adopted method of AI is likely Tesla Full Self-Driving, which impacts millions of people as they utilize it to increase safety with their travel. Musk has routinely pushed incredibly aggressive timelines for self-driving, especially unsupervised.
Perhaps this perspective is why he feels that things will be solved in a timeframe that is much more aggressive than most of us would think. Regardless, the progress of AI is moving fast, and it seems that Musk’s expectations for it could be high.
But if it can actually achieve full-length motion pictures and even more realistic production value, it will be hard to distinguish between reality and AI very soon.
Tesla just officially confirmed it has built its 10 millionth car, a major milestone for the company that started producing sustainable electric powertrains less than two decades ago.
In that time, Tesla has truly revolutionized the automotive industry, disrupting the idea of what a car should be, how it should be fueled, and how it truly impacts day-to-day life.
10 million vehicles produced globally.
Congrats to all Tesla teams! pic.twitter.com/JkcraR63bs— Tesla Manufacturing (@gigafactories) July 30, 2026
Tesla achieved this feat across four production facilities: the Fremont Factory in Fremont, California, Gigafactory Shanghai in China, Gigafactory Berlin in Germany, and Gigafactory Texas in Austin, Texas.
The 10 millionth vehicle was a Diamond Black Model Y.
Over the course of the past roughly 18 years, Tesla has evolved its lineup from a sporty sedan built on a Lotus body to a lineup of various body styles, performance metrics, and other characteristics that make each one unique.
This is an incredible achievement for a company that is young compared to what it goes up against. When Tesla entered the automotive market, Ford, GM, and Stellantis widely dominated the playing field. Since then, Tesla has caused such a disruption that these three massive brands had to scramble to create EV projects of their own.
Despite their best efforts, they have not been able to match the prowess or the effectiveness of Tesla. They are all reliant on Tesla’s charging infrastructure, their software is inferior, and their self-driving projects are elementary in comparison.
Tesla felt its fair share of growing pains over the years as well. As recent at 2019, there were complaints about build quality, paint quality, and overall luxuriousness. These things have all been improved upon through the company’s maturity, and these strides in quality have led to this 10 million vehicle production achievement, something that other small-and-scrappy EV makers will hope to accomplish one day.
SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
Elon Musk has a crazy prediction about AI in two years
Tesla just built it 10 millionth car
