Tesla caps employee AI spending at $200 per week

Starting July 6th, Tesla will limit each employee's AI spending to $200 per week. Just a few months ago, the company was pushing workers to use more AI tools. But usage grew too fast, with some software engineers burning through thousands of dollars in tokens weekly.

Tesla is now consolidating AI tools across teams, requiring everyone to use approved models with unified security rules. Any weekly spending over $200 needs approval, except for xAI's test products. So while Musk cuts AI costs at Tesla, he's leaving a door open for his own xAI.

This isn't unique to Tesla. Uber, Meta, Amazon, and Walmart have also capped AI spending or pushed for cheaper models. What makes Tesla stand out is how quickly it flipped - going from encouraging AI use to strict limits in just months. But pushing xAI's Grok internally hasn't worked well, as many employees still prefer Anthropic's Claude.