- CNBC reported that Elon Musk diverted Nvidia chips bound for Tesla to X and xAI.
- Longtime Tesla investor Ross Gerber said the move shows the EV maker is not Musk's priority.
- Shares of the carmaker are down over 30% since the start of the year.
Tesla isn't at the top of Elon Musk's list of priorities, according to longtime investor Ross Gerber.
Gerber, who owned over 400,000 shares of Tesla stock in 2023, pointed to Musk's recent emails to Nvidia, which told the chipmaker to send its GPUs to X instead of Tesla.
That diverted around $500 million worth of AI chips away from Tesla, according to a CNBC report, which could delay the EV maker's development of full self-driving vehicles and other AI initiatives.
Musk confirmed the decision in a recent post on X, adding that Tesla "had no place to send the Nvidia chips to turn them on." If the chips had been sent to Tesla, they "would have just sat in a warehouse, Musk said.
Tesla currently has six gigafactories, with its Texas gigafactory encompassing over 10 million square feet of factory floor space, according to the company's website. Construction on the south side of the Texas gigafactory is nearly complete, Musk said in the post, adding that section would hold 50,000 AI chips for training the company's full self-driving technology.
"I'm an investor at Tesla, so it doesn't feel good because I've walked the gigafactory in Austin and it's like 17 miles long," Gerber said in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday. "To say you don't have room for something is a weird excuse for the biggest factory I have ever seen ever."
Tesla, meanwhile, appears to be struggling with several operational difficulties, Gerber said.
The carmaker is also facing sluggish consumer demand and rising competition from rivals. Shares are down over 30% so far in 2024.
"Tesla is kind of the bottom of the pecking pole of Elon's companies," Gerber added.
Gerber has criticized Musk for not doing enough at Tesla, particularly after Musk made a high-profile takeover of Twitter in 2022. Musk having too much going on is part of the reason why Tesla stock has plunged so far this year, Gerber has said.
Musk is also in the process of trying to secure a $56 billion pay package at Tesla, and has recently threatened to move AI projects away from the company unless he has at least 25% control of the company, a request Gerber slammed as "delusional" in an earlier interview.
"It's very clear what the motivations are here. As an investor, I've done what I've needed to do and I've had to sell a lot of my Tesla stock. It's much smarter to own Nvidia right now," Gerber said, adding that Nvidia was now the top holding in his fund.
Not all high-profile investors have been critical of Musk's leadership of Tesla. Ron Baron, a billionaire investor and major shareholder, said he supported Musk's $56 billion pay package in an open letter, calling Musk the "key man" of the EV company.