Elon Musk biographer Walter Isaacson says a merger between Tesla and Musk’s AI startup xAI is likely, and would mark a turning point in the billionaire’s push to transform Tesla into a leader in real-world artificial intelligence.
“I think it’s going to happen,” Isaacson said in an interview today on CNBC. He added that Musk, even while launching xAI, was already discussing the need for AI that goes beyond text-based chatbots.
“What you need is real-world AI,” Isaacson said. “You need to be able to not only take all the texts and tweets that have ever been written, but all the videos from Teslas and the all the Optimus robot seeing and the hearing.”
Isaacson believes merging Tesla with xAI would fast-track Musk’s broader vision of building sensor-rich, physical AI systems. “You will have real-world AI, and once again, that will be one order of magnitude increased from what we’re looking at now,” he explained.
The merger, if it happens, would give Musk control over a combined pool of massive datasets—from Tesla’s autonomous driving footage and its humanoid robot Optimus, to social media trends from platform X. This consolidation, Isaacson said, reflects Musk’s view that Tesla is not just a car company, but a platform for deploying large-scale AI.
“He feels he has to have control in a company that’s doing physical AI,” Isaacson said, referring to Musk’s tendency to keep key technologies under one roof.
Such a move would also be seen as a step toward a larger goal that many investors have speculated about: Musk eventually merging all his ventures—including Tesla, xAI, X, Neuralink, SpaceX, Starlink, and The Boring Company—into one interconnected ecosystem.
Check out Isaacson on CNBC below on YouTube:
