Report: Elon Musk Rerouted Nvidia Chips Destined for Tesla to X
Elon Musk has been under scrutiny for the way he handles his duties at Tesla for a while now, and a recently uncovered email won’t help his case. CNBC recently obtained emails that show Musk asking Nvidia to prioritize processor shipments to his social media company, X, over Tesla.
While it’s possible that Musk had a legitimate reason for the ask, including that Tesla might not have been ready to accept a shipment from Nvidia, the emails highlight the automaker’s need for independent governance and a significant conflict of interest from its CEO. They also coincide with Tesla’s delay of an updated Gigafactory facility in Texas, which is planned to house a powerful computing cluster that would rely on a large number of processors.
Musk’s push to prioritize chips for X delayed Tesla’s efforts by months and could have implications for the automaker’s robotaxi and AI projects. The company plans to announce the robotaxi program in August, and some expect Musk to make the project the guiding light for Tesla’s business operations going forward.
Tesla shares fell slightly when the news broke, but there are more significant problems for the automaker and its CEO. Many have accused Musk of being only a part-time leader, as he splits his time between a handful of companies, including Neuralink, X, SpaceX, and The Boring Company.
Outside of this development, Tesla and Musk have plenty of distractions to keep them busy. The CEO and his supporters are pushing for approval of his massive compensation package worth tens of billions of dollars, and the automaker continues to face increasing scrutiny over its driver assistance technologies.
[Images: Tesla]
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Chris grew up in, under, and around cars, but took the long way around to becoming an automotive writer. After a career in technology consulting and a trip through business school, Chris began writing about the automotive industry as a way to reconnect with his passion and get behind the wheel of a new car every week. He focuses on taking complex industry stories and making them digestible by any reader. Just don’t expect him to stay away from high-mileage Porsches.
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This wouldn't be an issue had Apple done the same moving chips from low priced products to higher profit items.
So I had to go read real news to find out what the problem here is: the main actual issue is that Tesla is publicly held and X is privately held so shareholders may actually have a case if they decide to pursue it.
To clarify what these chips are for: they were going to be used in the data center to analyze driver data. Now they'll be used at X to analyze searches to better push content.
"“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,” an Nvidia memo from December said. “In exchange, original X orders of 12k H100 slated for Jan and June to be redirected to Tesla.”"