Tesla caps employee spending on rival AI tools at $200 weekly, exempts Musk's xAI.

Tesla has imposed a $200 weekly cap on employee spending for third-party AI tools, effective July 6, following an internal push for aggressive AI adoption that resulted in some software engineers consuming thousands of dollars in computing tokens each week. The new policy requires managerial approval for any expenses exceeding the limit and specifically exempts beta versions of AI products from Elon Musk's xAI company, including Grok, while all spending on competing models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google counts against the cap. This measure underscores the growing financial challenges companies face in controlling the variable costs of token-based AI billing, even as they continue to integrate the technology heavily into their engineering and product workflows.