The business model for Tesla and xAI is actually very simple and superior to OpenAI and Google's. No, this is not satire:

The business model is that his companies are meme stocks, and controlling social media means controlling meme stocks. The business model is also that his companies require corporate socialism, and controlling social media means influencing government policy.

He can talk about AI driving cars, but that's yesterday's news. Today, his business model for AI is to put his finger on the scale and influence society to help him become richer. AI is threatening to replace search, but in a way it's also threatening part of what social media provides, namely the ability to guide discourse at scale.

What's easier: Getting his personal board to give him a trillion dollars, and shoring up public support for that with bias in his AI products and on X? Or building a trillion-dollar business?

Elon Musk's business model for AI is actually quite easy to understand.

So lets see a $60k robot, lets say the whole economy crashes and money means nothing so they just call it $30k for kicks and giggles. Super cheap power since elon owns all the land now, he can have a tiny nuclear reactor every few house lengths. So $1 a day for power : 30365 / 365 days a year is about $80 a day in the first year, or maybe $40 a day assuming the reactors dont melt down for 2 years. So that is about 2 forced cokes down your throat per hour, 4 if you are a "known criminal" who is being robo-babysat. And that is still zero profit for elon because he has to shuffle all his assets around to the next farce of a fucking company

But the damned robot keeps drinking all my Coke Zero!

Not saying that the stock isn't a meme stock, but my car literally drives itself everywhere. Tesla has many business models.

Perhaps. I suppose the biggest in history then? $1.4T valuation and 60% of shares held by non-meme institutions (like pension funds, S&P tracking ETFs, etc) when you factor out insiders.