AUSTIN, Texas Elon Musk has formed a new company focused on artificial intelligence.
Musk, who also manages Tesla and SpaceX, announced the company’s launch on Twitter Wednesday afternoon, saying the company, xAI, was formed to “get the real thing.”
The company is expected to work closely with Tesla and Twitter, which Musk also owns, according to the xAI website.
According to the company’s website, the entity is considered separate from X Corp, but will work closely with Twitter, Tesla and other companies to make progress towards (its) mission.
Here’s what we know so far about the newly announced venture from one of the richest people in the world.
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What is xAI? What will it focus on?
The website provides few details about the AI company’s goals, but says the team will answer questions on Twitter Spaces on Friday, July 14.
The website also said the team includes alumni from Tesla, OpenAI, and Microsoft, and lists a team of 12, noting that team members have worked on AIs including AlphaCode, Inception, GPT-3.5, GPT4, and Minerva.
In a tweet, Greg Yang, one of the co-founders, said that the company will work to “develop the ‘theory of everything’ for large neural networks” in order to take AI to the next level. His tweet also said that the company will get into deep learning math, which is an aspect of artificial intelligence. Yang said AI will also enable everyone to better understand the mathematical universe.
Elon Musk on artificial intelligence
The launch of xAI also comes as Musk makes mixed comments about the technology. The billionaire said he believes AI will be key to Tesla’s future, but also said he fears AI could “eliminate” or “limit” humanity, and signed a letter calling for the industry-wide disruption to AI training for several months.
Musk’s plunge into AI was teased, including by a Financial Times report in April that said Musk was exploring an AI startup. The report also claims that Musk has acquired thousands of GPU processors needed for large-scale AI, according to an Insider report. Musk also told Fox News in April that he planned to develop anti-wakeup software called “TruthGPT” because he felt companies currently working on artificial intelligence were too “politically correct.”
The company appears to be keen to compete with existing AI companies, including OpenAI, a company Musk helped found but has been increasingly critical of in recent months.
OpenAI, one of the best-known generative AI companies, was founded in 2015 by Musk and a number of big tech players including Greg Brockman, Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, and Olivier Grabia. The company has built AI tools including ChatGPT, an AI chatbot, and Dall-E, an AI-powered art generator.
Musk stepped down from the OpenAI board in 2018 but remained a donor. He’s been a vocal critic of the company in recent months, calling it biased.
Musk also mentioned artificial intelligence during a keynote in Austin at EEI, where he called for more government regulation and oversight, and said he has been in touch with leaders about it.
What could this new company mean for Tesla?
Despite his comments and reservations, Musk has bet on artificial intelligence for Tesla.
In May at the company’s annual shareholder meeting, Musk spoke extensively on the topic, including Tesla’s as-yet-unreleased Optimus product, which the company says will be a humanoid robot run by artificial intelligence software. Musk sees the robot as the key to Tesla’s future. Optimus was designed with the same software as Tesla’s controversial “Full Self Driving” vehicle software, a technology that industry insiders and the company still don’t consider fully self-contained.
The company first revealed the robot last year during the company’s AI Day 2022, when the company showed off a robot that could barely walk. In May, an updated video showed the robot picking up objects, recognizing objects, walking and training on human movements.
In a Twitter Spaces in April, Musk also said that both Twitter and Tesla are buying GPUs, which can be used to develop artificial intelligence.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said xAI will likely work with Tesla as part of the Tesla ecosystem.
“We believe AI will be integrated into the Tesla vehicle over the next few years with FSD at its core. All of this will be part of the Tesla ecosystem with Austin playing a key role in the development of AI,” said Ives.
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