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Cailianshe News, August 10 (Edited by Zhao Hao)On Thursday (August 8th) local time, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts wrote a letter to Robyn Denholm, chairman of Tesla's board of directors.

Warren asked Denholm in her open letter whether Tesla's board had investigated whether Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk was using company resources to support his other ventures, including SpaceX and artificial intelligence startup xAI.

Warren, 75, is one of the representatives of the "progressive faction". She advocates policies such as strengthening supervision of technology companies, increasing taxes on the rich and large companies, exempting public university tuition, addressing climate change, and implementing "universal health care".

"Tesla's board appears to have failed in its fiduciary duties to Tesla shareholders by ignoring questions about Musk's apparent conflicts of interest," Warren wrote in the 10-page letter. Among the concerns she cited:

Musk founded an AI startup called xAI outside of Tesla, and Tesla itself claims to be an AI company;

Musk has threatened to research robotics and artificial intelligence outside of Tesla if he does not gain a higher degree of voting control at the company.

He encouraged shareholders to approve Tesla’s $5 billion investment in xAI, allocating a batch of expensive Nvidia AI chips originally reserved for Tesla to X (formerly known as Twitter).

Cailianshe previously reported that in June this year, a media outlet exposed an internal email from Nvidia, saying that Musk gave priority to delivering a large number of AI chips reserved for Tesla to X. Given that X's investors own 25% of xAI's shares, the outside world once speculated that these chips might be used for xAI.

Warren also asked about Tesla's staffing of xAI and mentioned a media report that a departing director believed "Tesla's board operates like a family company with its own fiefdoms, rather than a public company with strict rules and regulations."

Warren asked Denholm and Tesla to answer the above questions by August 23. But according to a spokesperson for Warren's office, Tesla and Denholm never responded to Warren's previous letters.

As a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, Warren has repeatedly expressed similar concerns, including asking the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to investigate Musk and Tesla.

At the end of 2022, she also sent a warning letter to Denholm, questioning Musk's sale of Tesla shares to acquire Twitter.

Earlier, Warren tweeted that Musk should pay taxes and stop "taking money from other people." Musk responded strongly: "If you open your eyes for two seconds, you will understand that this year I will pay more taxes than any American in history."