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Elon Musk has officially launched xAI, an innovative artificial intelligence company aimed at challenging Sam Altman’s OpenAI and “uncover the true nature of the universe”.
Musk himself will lead the company, and he has brought on board a team of experts from various top AI research labs, including Igor Babuschkin from DeepMind and researchers from Microsoft and OpenAI.
In addition, Musk has acquired thousands of GPU processors from Nvidia, which are essential for building large language models that require vast amounts of data.
The Financial Times initially reported Musk’s plans for an AI company in April, as he aimed to catch up with OpenAI’s growing influence in the sector following the launch of its ChatGPT chatbot in November.
Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI in 2015 but left in 2018 due to disagreements with the management regarding AI safety, according to former employees.
Over the past year, while Musk has focused on maximizing returns from his $44 billion Twitter acquisition, OpenAI, Google, and other generative AI companies such as Anthropic, Adept, and StabilityAI have made significant advancements in sophisticated AI models.
These advancements have propelled OpenAI’s valuation into the tens of billions and made AI models, which were once exclusively for researchers, accessible to the general public.
It is unclear how Musk plans to commercialize his own AI research efforts. The company’s website provides minimal information, mentioning only a twelve-member, all-male founding team. Musk tweeted that xAI was created to “understand reality,” without elaborating further.
Earlier this year, Musk was a prominent signatory of an open letter urging OpenAI and other AI research companies to “immediately pause for at least six months.”
The open letter warned that the development of AI more powerful than Altman’s ChatGPT4 chatbot, released in March, could intensify the “profound risks to society and humanity” posed by AI.
xAI will receive guidance from Dan Hendrycks, director of the Center for AI Safety, which aims to address the societal-scale risks associated with AI.
However, many members of the AI community have expressed skepticism about the timing of Musk’s involvement. Business records show that two weeks prior to the open letter’s publication, Musk and Jared Birchall, the ex-Morgan Stanley banker who manages his wealth, registered a company called X.AI in Nevada.
xAI will operate independently from Musk’s other ventures but will maintain close collaboration with Twitter and Tesla, as stated on its website.
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