While the ongoing race to create smarter and more capable AI is dominating headlines in the tech industry right now, there's another much lower-stakes battle brewing ... literally. In early April 2023, both electric auto giant Tesla and minimalist tech brand Nothing announced that they're making beers — and despite the timing, these weren't April Fool's pranks. So what gives?
What to know about Tesla's beer
The fact that Tesla would make a beer probably shouldn't be all that surprising. The brand at times seems to function solely to amuse its mercurial leader, Elon Musk, and has previously released out-of-left-field products, including a tequila and a surfboard. So really, a Tesla beer almost seems on-brand.
Dubbed Tesla GigaBier, it's a limited-edition German-brewed pilsner that's meant to "honor the 500-year tradition of German Reinheitsgebot beermaking." The beer is brewed with a strain of hops that Tesla is calling "Cyberhops," and the brand claims the strain is exclusive to them. Brewed at 5 percent ABV, GigaBier is housed in a black bottle that's meant to evoke the sharp angles of the still-unreleased Cybertruck, with a glow-in-the-dark "Giga" watermark. The Tesla beer is sold in three-packs of 330-ml bottles and is priced at €89 (~$98). Dutch craft beer distributor BrouwUnie is handling the beer's distribution for the car company, and it's currently on sale exclusively to the European market through a dedicated website.
What to know about Nothing's beer
Not to be outdone, Nothing announced its own beer on April Fool's Day in what initially appeared to be a joke but has since proven to be an actual product. Nothing's foray into beermaking is certainly more curious than the historically unpredictable Tesla. Up until now, Nothing has mainly stayed in its lane as the anti-Apple, churning out stripped-down and simplified tech gadgets in the form of its Nothing Phone and Ear earbuds.
But Apple, to the best of my knowledge, has never released a craft beer, so Nothing is sort of forging its own path here. The brand's beer is fittingly minimalist, with a plain silver can labeled "Beer (5.1%)" in Nothing's usual font. That simple title is also the name of the beer, alluding to the fact that it is a beer with an ABV of 5.1%. The brew itself is an unfiltered rice lager that was made for Nothing by Welsh microbrewery Freetime Beer Co, and it should be available on Nothing's website and at the Nothing Store Soho this summer, along with (potentially) some bars or stores that are interested in stocking it. Nothing is also tying the beer to its Nothing X app, promising the "full Beer (5.1%) experience" in the app.
So why did Nothing make a beer? We've reached out to the brand for comment and will update this piece if/when we hear back, but in the meantime, here's Nothing's reasoning from its website:
At Nothing, we're always looking for ways to do things differently and to make every day more fun. We're a brand that brings people together so making a beer felt like a natural progression for us. We also prototyped it at our store launch party in London and people seemed to like it.
In other words: they did it because they wanted to.
Will more tech companies make craft beer?
So what does this all mean? Are we seeing the birth of a new trend in the tech industry? Are an Amazon Ale or IBM IPA on the horizon? Probably not. Nothing, and especially Tesla, are both known as companies that thrive on hype and that sometimes do things just for headlines (hey, it worked in this case). So, in all likelihood, the trend of tech companies selling craft brews will end with the two brands that started it. But if I'm wrong and Silicon Valley starts trading microchips for microbrews, you'll read about it here.
