Tesla (TSLA.O) CEO Elon Musk has told Nvidia (NVDA.O) to prioritize shipments of AI processors to his companies X and xAI over the electric-vehicle maker, CNBC reported on Tuesday.
The news signals Musk is giving precedence to artificial intelligence-related development outside Tesla and comes ahead of a crucial shareholder vote on his pay package at the company.
"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 internal Nvidia memo from December showed, according to the CNBC report.
"In exchange, original X orders of 12K H100 slated for Jan and June to be redirected to Tesla," the memo said.
The change delays Tesla's receipt of more than $500 million in processors by months, according to CNBC.
Musk said earlier this year Tesla was increasing the number of Nvidia's most advanced chips it has deployed and will spend $10 billion on AI this year. He has also promised to set up supercomputer clusters in New York and Austin, part of initiatives to advance the development of self-driving software and robotics.
He is pursuing AI development at X, formerly Twitter, and xAI, for chatbot Grok, among other applications.
Tesla shareholders will vote on June 13 on a pay package for Musk that is considered to be the largest for a CEO in corporate America.
Tesla, which did not respond to a request for comment, has been battling a slowdown in the EV market and announced layoffs of more than 10% globally in April.
Nvidia declined to comment.
Tesla shares fell nearly 1%.
