The Wall Street Journal was the first to disclose that Elon Musk has founded an AI-focused company under the name X.AI. A Nevada document shows that the firm was formed just last month, and both Musk and Jared Birchall, the director of Musk’s family office, are listed as directors and secretaries, respectively. The registration, which was also acquired by The Verge, shows that Musk officially formed the company on March 9, 2023.
Business Insider reported that Musk had bought thousands of GPUs to fuel a new generative AI product, lending credence to the rumors that he was creating an AI startup. Similar to what was reported by the Financial Times, Musk intended to launch a rival AI startup to OpenAI, which is supported by Microsoft. According to reports, Musk even approached investors in SpaceX and Tesla for seed money.
In response to a question regarding how many graphics processing units (GPUs) Musk had bought, the billionaire responded, “It seems like everyone and their dog is buying GPUs at this point.” The supposed X.AI moniker is consistent with the branding of the X Corp. name he has since allocated to Twitter and the “X” label he has applied to his concept of an “everything app.”
Musk has been vocally against OpenAI, the artificial intelligence organization he co-founded in 2015 but left in 2018, and recently signed a letter urging a halt to “giant AI experiments.” OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT-4 technologies have helped make it a household name in recent months, and the company is credited with helping Microsoft and Google get started on their current effort to integrate AI capabilities more deeply into many of their products.
