| Thanks for reading Hyperdrive, Bloomberg's newsletter on the future of the auto world. Hand it to Elon Musk — he's got gumption. All of five weeks after Tesla shareholders reapproved his unprecedented pay package, the CEO looks poised to press his luck. Alongside Tesla posting another set of disappointing quarterly earnings, the billionaire is floating what would amount to an indirect bailout of investors in his social media company formerly known as Twitter. The would-be rescue involves xAI — Musk's OpenAI wannabe — and X, which is still reeling from what its owner has done since his disastrous $44 billion acquisition almost two years ago. Before we get to that, some background. Soon after announcing he'd formed a company to compete with ChatGPT, the smash-hit artificial intelligence chatbot, Musk made clear that this wasn't all he was up to. He revealed that investors in X would own 25% of xAI, meaning he was intertwining an enterprise that was in dire straits with an up-and-comer in the tech sector's hottest space. It didn't take long for a stake in xAI to serve as some consolation for Musk's value destruction at X. In May of this year, xAI announced it had raised $6 billion at a pre-money valuation of $18 billion. But Musk doesn't want to stop there. During the portion of Tesla's second-quarter earnings call Tuesday when executives answer pre-submitted questions from investors, Musk was asked to provide any updates on investing in xAI — a prospect that came out of left field. Musk said that Tesla is "learning quite a bit" from xAI, then vaguely referred to the startup advancing the carmaker's driver-assistance features and helping build up a new data center. "Regarding investing in xAI, I think we'd need to have a shareholder approval of any such investment," Musk said. "But I'm certainly supportive of that, if shareholders are." Soon after the call wrapped, Musk created a poll on X, throwing out a big number. "Should Tesla invest $5B into @xAI, assuming the valuation is set by several credible outside investors?" he asked. In parentheses, he wrote that board approval and a shareholder vote are needed, so the poll was "just to test the waters." Let's hope for Tesla investors' sake that the result of this poll goes the way an earlier one did in December 2022. When Musk asked users then whether he should step down as head of Twitter, about 58% of votes were cast against him. Remember, Musk dumped billions of dollars' worth of Tesla shares that year to help fund his Twitter purchase, tanking the carmaker's stock. Also recall that Musk has bailed out one company in his orbit with another before — Tesla acquired SolarCity in 2016, and even the CEO himself later regretted it. And don't forget that one of the reasons Tesla gave for making Musk eligible for $55.8 billion worth of stock options was to incentivize him to focus on the car company. That reasoning was already rendered laughable by Musk only adding to his plate in the years since Tesla's board of directors drew up the pay award. xAI is now the sixth company he runs. Tesla has incurred enough damage from Musk's Twitter deal and xAI hiring away its employees. AI chips that had been destined for Tesla already have gone xAI's way instead. Tesla would be better off putting $5 billion to work bringing cheaper electric vehicles to market and restoking sales growth that has stalled out.  Photo Illustration by 731; Photos: Getty Images (3); Tesla (1) When Joe Biden announced he was bailing on his bid for reelection, the news reached millions of people via the president's post to X. Some are calling that a win for Elon Musk's beleaguered platform, but Musk himself seemed to be preoccupied with propping up former president Donald Trump. The team behind Elon, Inc., discuss this and speak with Fred Lambert, editor-in-chief of Electrek, about the evolution of Musk and Tesla fanhood on X. Listen to the latest episode and be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcasts.  Baidu's Apollo RT6 robotaxis. Source: Bloomberg China's embrace of autonomous driving is doing little to rev up optimism among analysts searching for Baidu's next catalyst. The internet search leader's shares have almost erased gains notched in Hong Kong this month after the company announced an expansion into ride-hailing with a fleet of fully self-driving cars in the city of Wuhan. Now, Baidu's stock may extend its year-to-date decline with analysts cutting its average 12-month target price to an all-time low. "No one really knows how successful it will be, nor do they know about future government policy toward the technology," said Kai Wang, a Morningstar analyst. "Mass commercialization is still like three to five years away." | 
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