Big Tech Firms Control AI Costs: Tesla Caps Weekly AI Spending for Employees at $200

Major tech companies that once encouraged engineers to use artificial intelligence (AI) are now shifting toward controlling related costs.

Tesla, the electric vehicle company led by CEO Elon Musk, announced a policy last month to cap employees' AI usage spending at a maximum of $200 (approximately 300,000 won) per week, according to a report by the U.S. tech news outlet The Information, which obtained an internal memo on July 2 (local time).

This limit will take effect starting July 6, and any usage exceeding this amount will require separate approval.

However, the beta AI models from xAI, a sister company also led by the same CEO, are exempt from these restrictions.

The move is interpreted as an effort to address a situation where the costs for Tesla software engineers to use AI models had been reaching thousands of dollars per week for several months.

Last year, Tesla launched an internal platform called "Bottle Rocket," encouraging employees to use AI models such as OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Cursor.

Recently, the company encouraged employees to test new models, including "Composer" from the coding app developer Cursor—which is slated for acquisition by SpaceX—and xAI's "Grok."

However, internal sources reported that employees prefer Anthropic's "Claude" over these models.

It appears that Tesla was also concerned about the potential leakage of internal data through the use of external AI.

Tesla has blocked internal network access to unauthorized external models and introduced security policies to prevent the leakage of confidential information.

On top of this, the company has now implemented a cap on AI spending.

Big tech firms in Silicon Valley had for some time fueled an AI usage race, often referred to as "token-maxing," but are now rushing to limit usage as they face rising costs.

Meta once stated that it would reflect AI usage in performance bonuses but effectively retracted the policy, and other major companies are also shifting their focus toward increasing efficiency.

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.