Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s poll on social media platform X asking users whether the electric carmaker should invest $5 billion in his AI startup xAI garnered early votes clearly showing most in favour of the move. Reason behind this may be the statement of Musk during Tesla’s earning conference call. Musk had said xAI would be “helpful in advancing full self-driving and in building up the new Tesla data center,” adding further that there are ample opportunities to integrate Grok (xAI’s chatbot) with Tesla’s software.

“Board approval & shareholder vote are needed, so this is just to test the waters,” Musk said of this poll which came in the grim backdrop of Tesla posting its lowest profit margin in five years due to price cuts and increased spending on AI projects. Roughly 3 hours after the poll was posted, almost 386,000 people had participated with whopping 70% voting in favour of the investment.

Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, launched AI startup xAI last year, with the aim to build an alternative to ChatGPT. The startup raised whopping $6 billion in a series B funding in May, reaching a post-money valuation of $24 billion. Backers include Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. Musk has earlier said that he wants that a quarter of xAI be owned by investors in X (formerly Twitter), which he acquired for astronomical $44 billion although the social media firm’s value has nosedived since then.

On the Tesla earnings call, Musk also dismissed apprehensions that he may be diverting Tesla resources to some of his other companies. In June, CNBC had reported that Musk had ordered Nvidia to ship thousands of AI chips meant for Tesla to xAI and X. Musk had stated that Tesla’s data center was full and there was no place to put the chips.

Musk has been a frequent poller on X. He has a history of making decisions in line with poll results. In December 2022, the billionaire tech magnate polled users on Twitter on whether he should quit as the company’s CEO, and later resigned after 57.5% of respondents on the poll wanted his resignation. In the same month, Musk launched a poll asking whether Twitter should restore journalists’ accounts that had been suspended for alleged violation of Twitter’s personal privacy policy by sharing Musk’s location. Almost 59% of users said those accounts should be reinstated immediately, and just days later, Musk brought back the accounts.