Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly pushed for shipments of Nvidia AI processors that were originally meant for the EV maker to be redirected to X, the social media platform he purchased nearly two years ago, emails obtained by CNBC showed.
However, Musk responded to the story, explaining why Tesla would have had trouble handling the shipment.
Musk revealed that Tesla was looking to increase an order of Nvidia’s H100 chip from 35,000 to 85,000 units by the end of the year as part of a massive $10 billion expenditure plan that would help with “combined training and inference AI.”
However, emails seen by CNBC reportedly showed Nvidia senior staffers talking about Musk wanting chips originally meant for Tesla to get to X instead.
The email read:
“Elon prioritizing X H100 GPU cluster deployment at X versus Tesla by redirecting 12k of shipped H100 GPUs originally slated for Tesla to X instead. In exchange, original X orders of 12k H100 slated for Jan and June to be redirected to Tesla.”
The email was written in December.
Another email from late April showed Musk’s comments regarding the uptick in orders from 35,000 to 85,000, as well as his X communication regarding $10 billion in AI spending would “conflict with bookings and FY 2025 forecasts,” the article said.
Musk responded to the story, stating that Tesla “had no place to turn the Nvidia chips on” and that Giga Texas’s expansion will house 50,000 H100 chips for Full Self-Driving training:
Tesla had no place to send the Nvidia chips to turn them on, so they would have just sat in a warehouse.
The south extension of Giga Texas is almost complete. This will house 50k H100s for FSD training.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2024
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has kept a good relationship with Tesla and Musk and recently admitted the company is the leader in self-driving:
“Tesla is far ahead in self-driving cars. But every single car, someday, will have to have autonomous capability. It’s safer. It’s more convenient. It’s more fun to drive.”
The communication’s surfacing comes just as Musk’s $56 billion pay package is set to be voted on once again at the upcoming Tesla Shareholder Meeting. Many shareholders want to ratify Musk’s massive payout, while others are conflicted with his commitment to the automaker.
This has led some Tesla and Musk fans to question his commitment to the automaker. With the Shareholder Vote coming soon, Tesla has pulled out all the stops to make sure Musk gets paid, especially as he has threatened to stop growing the company to be “a leader in AI & robotics without having ~25% voting control.”
Musk said if he cannot get to that ownership point, he “would prefer to build products outside of Tesla.”
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