Musk Tells Tesla Employees to Use Grok to Cut AI Token Costs

Tesla relies heavily on artificial intelligence for autonomous driving and software development. To improve research and development efficiency, its engineers have frequently used third-party models such as Anthropic’s Claude to help write code and analyze data. As development has expanded, however, the cost of tokens from external AI models has become a financial burden, making greater self-reliance and cost control key operational priorities for Tesla.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk issued an internal memo in July 2026 instructing employees to replace Anthropic’s Claude with Grok, developed by his xAI unit. The switch is estimated to make token costs nearly 12 times lower. Although Musk acknowledged that Claude performs better, he said most development tasks do not require such advanced AI capabilities. The move reflects Tesla’s trade-off between technical performance and operating costs.