Jensen Huang, the Founder of Nvidia, has endorsed Tesla’s move of adopting artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for self-driving cars, barely weeks before a decision is to be made about the fate of CEO Elon Musk’s rather outlandish remuneration structure. Musk has directed the energy and focus at Tesla towards AI innovation, effectively betting the whole company on this particular technology shift. He has axed his previous strategy of aiming to build and sell 20 million vehicles per year by 2030, which was equivalent to the combined capacity of Toyota and Volkswagen.
Huang, in an interview with Yahoo Finance recently admitted that Tesla was indeed a leader in the market segment of self-driving cars. Nevertheless, this shift towards AI has stirred controversies in spite of Tesla’s primary mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transportation. Although Musk’s “supervised Full Self-Driving” has been acknowledged as a top-tier ADAS, its USD 15,000 price set it apart from others and failed to appeal to potential buyers because of the need for constant supervision when operating within city environments.
Therefore, Musk has been under pressure to bring down the prices back to USD 8,000 that it was at before the FSD beta was launched in October of 2020. For investors, the opinion of Huang, an influential and popular figure in the world of technology, could go a long way to calming their concerns over the future prospects of Tesla. Referring to Tesla, Huang spoke about technological advancement which is on the backdrop of its AI projects.
While Tesla shareholders get ready to meet again to vote on Musk’s insanely huge USD 55 billion package, the annual general meeting scheduled for June 13 is expected to be hotly contested. Moreover, there is probability that the controversial recommendation of proxy advisers such as Glass Lewis to shareholders to vote against Musk’s pay plan increases the risk of the vote. In such a case, while agreeing with Musk that AI strategy is important, a testimony from a high profile personality such as Huang would go a long way in strengthening his argument. This statement is credible, especially given the fact that Huang managed to build Nvidia into a reputable and prominent company.