Elon Musk is making headlines with the news of a new venture. The tech heavyweight recently incorporated X.AI, a private artificial intelligence (AI) company, in Nevada. Musk is the sole director of the new company, with Jared Birchall, the director of Musk’s family office, serving as the secretary. With X.AI and its 100 million shares, Musk plans to compete directly with OpenAI, a research laboratory that he co-founded in 2015.
Rumors of Musk’s new AI firm have been circulating for quite some time, with the Financial Times reporting that Musk has been recruiting AI researchers and engineers from various companies, including Alphabet-owned DeepMind. Musk also revealed that a bunch of investors were keen to back his new AI venture.
The man behind Tesla and SpaceX explained that the name of the new company, X.AI, is actually a reference to his ambition to create an AI-powered everything app. He previously changed Twitter’s name to X Corp and relocated its incorporation from Delaware to Nevada. X Corp is the parent company of X Holdings Corp.
Currently, Musk is quite concerned about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence — he recently stepped down from OpenAI’s board to avoid any potential conflicts of interest with his work at Tesla. The automaker makes use of AI technology for its self-driving cars. Musk also criticized OpenAI for pursuing artificial general intelligence, which is the ability of machines to perform any intellectual task that humans can.
Just recently, Tesla’s billionaire founder acquired over 10,000 graphics processing units that are likely to be used for the development of X.AI. These tech components are commonly used to manage the computational workload of AI technology.
OpenAI has yet to comment on Musk’s new AI company, but the project’s co-founder and CEO, Sam Altman, posted a tweet saying “Concerning” in response to the Wall Street Journal report.
In July, Transform 2023, a two-day event, will take place in San Francisco. It will be attended by CEOs and other executives who want to learn how to optimize investments in AI and how to avoid common pitfalls.
As a company specializing in the development of AI technology, X.AI is sure to generate more buzz and help accelerate the advancement of the industry even further. It will certainly be interesting to see how Musk’s new venture will help shape the future of AI.
