Billionaires: Elon Musk’s poll shows majority favour Tesla investing $5bn in AI start-up

In our round-up of the world’s ultra-wealthy, Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta seeks partners to develop Zambia mines and Warren Buffett’s stake in Chinese car maker BYD falls below 5%

Elon Musk set up xAI in early 2023, months after OpenAI ushered in the AI boom with the launch of ChatGPT. AP

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk asked X users whether the company should invest $5 billion in his artificial intelligence start-up, saying he was “testing the waters” for a potential deal.

More than two thirds of respondents voted “yes”.

The businessman posed the question on July 23, shortly after the car maker reported a fourth straight quarter of disappointing profit.

Mr Musk was asked during the earnings call if the company would invest in xAI or integrate its chatbot, called Grok, into Tesla’s software.

“Tesla is learning quite a bit from xAI,” he said. It helped advance full self-driving, he added.

Mr Musk said he supported the idea of Tesla investing in xAI, if shareholders approved it.

He set up xAI in early 2023, months after OpenAI ushered in the AI boom with the launch of ChatGPT.

The billionaire co-founded OpenAI as a non-profit and was its leading funder before resigning from the board in 2018, citing a potential future conflict of interest with his role at Tesla.

Concern about conflicts have resurfaced as Mr Musk has built his latest start-up.

In April, he said Tesla was having to make special efforts to retain AI specialists, and that some had left the car maker for xAI.

In June, Mr Musk confirmed he diverted scarce AI chips from Tesla to X and xAI.

In the midst of those developments, xAI announced it had raised $6 billion in a funding round that valued the start-up at about $18 billion.

Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz were among the companies to take part in one of the biggest investments so far in generative AI.

Anil Agarwal

Vedanta Resources, the mining company that billionaire Anil Agarwal founded, is looking for business partners to boost output at the Zambian copper assets it is regaining control of after years of legal battles.

The company is seeking partners to carry out exploration, development and production as part of a $1 billion investment plan at the Konkola Copper Mines assets, it said in calls for expressions of interest in the state-owned Times of Zambia newspaper on July 24. The deadline is July 31.

The company lost control of Konkola in 2019 after the government placed operations under provisional liquidation, accusing Vedanta of lying about expansion plans and not paying enough taxes.

That sparked a years-long legal battle until Zambia agreed to the hand the assets back.

Mr Agarwal sees KCM as a key source of copper for India, which has limited supplies of its own.

Warren Buffett

When Berkshire Hathaway offloads another chunk of BYD shares – a stock it has held for more than 15 years – it will be done in secret.

Warren Buffett’s investment firm disclosed in a filing to the Hong Kong exchange on July 29 that its stake has fallen to 4.94 per cent from 5.06 per cent, and down from more than 20 per cent two years ago.

Dropping below the 5 per cent threshold means that Berkshire is no longer obligated to disclose any further sales, or whether it exits its position altogether.

Mr Buffett saw a 2,000 per cent gain from his early bet on BYD, which went from a little-known Chinese battery provider for cell phones to the biggest electric and hybrid vehicle maker in a little over 20 years.

At a market valuation of just shy of $100 billion, BYD is the third most-valuable car maker globally after Tesla and Toyota Motor.

Other early investors have also taken profit. Himalaya Capital once held 75 million shares for a stake of around 8.2 per cent but its interest dipped below 5 per cent in 2021.

Himalaya’s chairman Li Lu was the one who recommended the Chinese car maker to the late Charlie Munger, Berkshire’s former vice-chairman.

Berkshire purchased 225 million of BYD’s Hong Kong-listed shares in 2008 for $232 million.

BYD’s market-leading position stems in part from its vertical integration that keeps costs down – the company makes its own batteries and semiconductors, and even has its own ship to send cars abroad – and also its strong line-up of cars along all price points.

BYD sold a record number of electric and hybrid vehicles in the second quarter. The Chinese brand sold just shy of 1 million units between April and June.

Zhong Shanshan

China’s richest man is at risk of losing the pole position he’s held for almost three years, with his wealth slipping the most among billionaires around the world as intensifying competition and mishaps plague the bottled water company he founded.

Zhong Shanshan, chairman of Hangzhou-based Nongfu Spring, has lost $13 billion so far in 2024, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with a fortune of $49.7 billion as of July 25.

That keeps him a whisker above Colin Huang, founder of online shopping platform PDD Holdings. Mr Huang’s fortune stands at $47.3 billion.

Most of Mr Zhon’s fortune is derived from stakes in the beverage company and pharmaceutical business Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise.

Earlier this year, Nongfu Spring – and Mr Zhong himself – were barraged by criticism after the death in February of Zong Qinghou, founder of key rival Hangzhou Wahaha Group.

Online sympathy after his passing morphed into a takedown of Nongfu, with some comments deriding its bottled water packaging as looking Japanese in design, and others recapping what they alleged were tricks Nongfu had used to gain an advantage over Wahaha.

In a blow to Nongfu, Wahaha sales surged. While Nongfu refuted some of the claims and said it had taken legal action against people who instigated malicious rumours, many Chinese internet users remained unmoved.

In April, China Resources Beverage Holdings filed for a Hong Kong listing, a move set to provide additional resources for its bottled water brand C’estbon – one of Nongfu’s major competitors.

Soon after, Nongfu introduced a new purified water in direct competition with C’estbon, pushing prices to the floor.

Even as Nongfu reported stronger-than-expected earnings last year thanks to robust sales of its ready-to-drink teas, the proportion of revenue from packaged drinking water dropped to 47.5 per cent – from 54.9 per cent in 2022.

In the latest headwind, Hong Kong’s Consumer Council said Nongfu’s water had been found to contain the maximum limit of bromate, which could pose health risks when overconsumed.

Shares plunged by 7.3 per cent in two trading days before the council clarified that its early findings had come as a result of evaluating Nongfu’s water against criteria used for a category to which it doesn’t belong.

Shares bounced back after the watchdog apologised, but wiped out gains again.

To shore up confidence, Nongfu announced earlier this month that Mr Zhong intended to buy up to HK$2 billion ($256 million) of the company’s shares via Yangshengtang, a holding company he controls.

On July 9, Yangshengtang bought about 3.5 million shares, according to regulatory filings.

Compiled from Bloomberg