Musk uses the power of his business empire to promote the AI dream, and the money-burning machine urgently needs the support of Tesla shareholders

The money in Elon Musk's business empire is increasingly converging in one direction: artificial intelligence (AI). The billionaire said on Sunday that he plans to let Tesla shareholders vote on whether to allow the company to invest in xAI, the artificial intelligence venture it founded two years ago. SpaceX, Mr. Musk's space transportation company, recently agreed to invest about $2 billion in xAI, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Musk said he did not support merging xAI with other companies, but wanted Tesla investors to share in the dividends of xAI's growth. In March, xAI was merged into Mr. Musk's social platform X in an all-stock transaction, valuing the company at $113 billion. However, Mr. Musk did not say how investing in xAI by multiple companies would curb the company's $1 billion-a-month cash burn. xAI is trying to build advanced AI models to compete with competitors like OpenAI, but it has yet to gain a foothold among large enterprise customers or establish a central position in the developer community.