Executive Summary

• Tesla announces plans to sell Megapod, the AI data centre hardware. This month he filed a “Megapod” trademark (serial number 99893717) with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this month, through its longtime IP counsel.
• Graeme Murray, Registered and Chartered Trade Mark Attorney at leading International Intellectual Property law firm Marks & Clerk comments that we are dealing with the protection of all trade mark functions, such as the advertising function, the guarantee of quality and the investment function.
• Brands are so intrinsically linked to our daily lives, they battle for space and attention, trade mark protection is essential.

Earlier this week, news circulated that Tesla plans to sell Megapod, its AI data centre hardware; it came as a surprise because typically Tesla is the kind of company who purchases hardware, not selling it in direct competition with NVIDIA, of whom they are a customer.

Tesla filed the “Megapod” trademark (serial number 99893717) with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this month, through its longtime IP counsel. It’s an intent-to-use application, meaning Tesla is claiming the name for a product it hasn’t launched yet, which is rather interesting.

Nvidia owns this market already; its GB200 NVL72 is a liquid-cooling, rack-scale system packing 72 Blackwell GPUs and 36 Grace CPUs – this is the reference design for modular AI compute right now. Megapod will be entering a hugely competitive market, competing with established, liquid-cooling rack-scale systems from the company whose chips power it.

Tesla’s AI hardware record is a tad shaky

Its Dojo supercomputer was killed off in August 2025 when Musk called the design “an evolutionary dead end” after a good majority of the team left. Furthermore, when Musk pivoted to A15 and A16 chips, both ceased to exist, with A15 being two years behind the intended scheduled and A16 slipping six months in project timelines as Samsung’s 2nd line struggles.

Leading Trade Mark Attorney comments on this move

Graeme Murray, Registered and Chartered Trade Mark Attorney at leading International Intellectual Property law firm Marks & Clerk said:

“Tesla is developing modular AI data centre hardware and a trade mark application has been filed for MEGAPOD claiming associated goods. As usual, the brand adopted by Tesla is bombastic and reinforces the overarching Musk/Tesla brand identity, speaking to consumers on many levels.

“The proliferation of AI has seen a rise in AI brands that speak to consumers and quickly develop significant reputation in the market. Brands like Grok and ChatGPT epitomise the value of trade marks and trade mark protection in this space. We are not just dealing with origin function protection, but protection of all trade mark functions, such as the advertising function, the guarantee of quality and the investment function. When brands are so intrinsically linked to our daily lives and brands are battling for space and attention, all of these functions become extremely important and trade mark protection is essential.”