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Cailianshe News, July 24 (Editor: Huang Junzhi)Tesla CEO Elon Musk launched a poll on the social media platform X, asking fans whether Tesla should invest $5 billion in xAI. The preliminary voting results showed that most people supported the move.

He initiated the vote shortly after Tesla's second-quarter earnings call on Tuesday evening, which showed the company's profit margins fell to their lowest level in five years due to price cuts and increased spending on artificial intelligence (AI) projects.

Musk emphasized at the end of the vote, "Board approval and shareholder votes are necessary, so this is just a test of the waters." Nearly 7 hours after the vote was released, about 480,000 people participated in the vote, of which more than 70% were in favor of the investment.

xAI was founded in 2023 and is Musk's counterpartOpenAIMusk previously told investors that his xAI plan would build a supercomputer to power its next-generation AI chatbot, Grok. He hopes to have the supercomputer operational by the fall of 2025.

In May this year, xAI successfully raised $6 billion in financing, with investors including Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Asset Management, Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holding Company, etc. The company said that this funding will help bring xAI's first products to market, build advanced infrastructure and accelerate the research and development of future technologies.

During an earnings call on Tuesday, shareholders asked Musk whether Tesla would invest in xAI and integrate the large model Grok built by xAI into its vehicles.

Musk said xAI will "help advance the world'sAutopilotand building new Tesla data centers,” adding that there is an opportunity to integrate xAI’s chatbot Grok with Tesla’s software. However, he did not elaborate on how Grok would “advance” Tesla’s self-driving technology.

"Tesla has learned a lot from xAI. It is actually very helpful in advancing full autonomous driving and building new Tesla data centers. Regarding investing in xAI, I think we need to get shareholder approval for such investments. But if shareholders agree, I will definitely support it," he said.

It is worth noting that the $5 billion figure did not surface until Musk initiated the above vote.

However, it is not uncommon for Musk to initiate polls and ask fans on X. In 2021, he initiated a vote asking whether he should sell 10% of Tesla shares, and a few days after the vote, he actually started selling shares.