
Tesla unveils $2,000,000 in funding for startup accelerator for small business owners
Tesla’s new accelerator program will provide funding to start-ups in the automotive industry, its CEO, Elon Musk, announced Tuesday.
The company is looking for startups to develop, scale and launch an accelerator program to help them scale their businesses.
“We have some of the best engineers in the world and a bunch of fantastic, dedicated entrepreneurs in our team,” Musk said in a statement.
“They’re going to be building something out of nothing.”
The accelerator will be run by Autodesk and Tesla’s Autonomous Vehicle Research Center, or AVRC, which is a research and development center dedicated to building autonomous vehicles.
“It’s going to allow us to bring together the best of the automotive world, from autonomous vehicles to autonomous driving to self-driving cars, so we can bring together a bunch more people to create something truly revolutionary,” Musk told the crowd at the announcement.
Musk’s announcement comes after Tesla announced that it had raised $2 million in seed funding for its autonomous vehicle accelerator program.
The accelerator program has the support of the National Science Foundation and other government agencies, but Musk said the goal is to build up to 200 companies by 2019.
The new funding is the latest investment in Tesla’s fledgling automotive start-up ecosystem, which has seen its number of start-outs grow in recent years.
Earlier this year, Musk also announced that he would be investing $2 billion in a “small business accelerator” called The Foundry, which he said would be the first “innovation center in the US” dedicated solely to small businesses.
Musk also launched a crowdfunding campaign for his company, SpaceX, earlier this month, hoping to raise at least $2.5 billion to help accelerate the development of reusable rockets.
“SpaceX is doing the right thing in putting this money to work,” Musk tweeted Tuesday.