Overview
- Elon Musk said the joint effort, also called Digital Optimus, combines xAI’s Grok as a high‑level navigator with a Tesla‑built agent that acts on the past five seconds of live screen video and keyboard/mouse inputs.
- He said the system will run on Tesla’s in‑house AI4 chip, paired with xAI’s Nvidia‑based servers, and claimed it could emulate the functions of entire companies.
- Business Insider previously reported the standalone Macrohard effort at xAI had stalled, citing leadership departures and a paused data‑annotation program involving roughly 600 contractors.
- Some Macrohard work and computing capacity have been told to shift to Tesla’s Autopilot team as Tesla advances an internal Digital Optimus agent, according to people familiar with the matter.
- The announcement follows Tesla’s January agreement to invest about $2 billion in xAI and SpaceX’s February acquisition of xAI, and it contrasts with Musk’s 2024 assertion that Tesla had no need to license xAI technology.