Elon Musk Creates X.AI, a New Artificial Intelligence Company

Summary: 

• Elon Musk creates new AI company X.AI Corp. registered in Nevada.
• Musk recruits researchers to create rival AI lab to OpenAI.
• Musk joins tech executives and AI researchers in calling for moratorium on advanced AI development.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) firm, X.AI Corp, that has been incorporated in Nevada, according to state filings reports the Wall Street Journal.

Musk is the only director listed, while the secretary is Jared Birchall, the director of Musk’s family office. X.AI has approved the sale of 100 million shares for the privately-held company.

The new company shares its name with Musk’s effort to create an everything app named X, and Twitter, which he owns, recently changed its name to X Corp., similarly filed in Nevada. Legal experts suggest that Nevada’s laws offer more protection to a company’s management and officers than Delaware.

Musk has spent the past few months recruiting researchers with the aim of creating a rival effort to OpenAI, the AI firm behind the viral chatbot ChatGPT, according to sources.

OpenAI’s launch of GPT-4 earlier this year set off significant investor interest in the sector. Musk has complained that ChatGPT is politically biased and stated that he wants to create AI models that are more truth-seeking. The Tesla CEO has recruited Igor Babuschkin, a scientist at Google’s AI research division DeepMind, to lead the new lab.

Musk co-founded OpenAI eight years ago but departed from the company in early 2018 following a power struggle with its current CEO, Sam Altman.

The success of Musk’s new lab would add another entrant to the race among tech companies to develop more powerful AI models. Google, Amazon, and OpenAI are just some of the firms with their own AI initiatives. Late last month, Musk joined other tech executives and AI researchers in calling for a moratorium on advanced AI development, citing the need to establish safety standards for the technology.

Earlier this week, Musk was said to have purchased 10,000 GPUs for a supposed AI project at Twitter. The Financial Times reports these GPU purchases are actually for this new AI startup, according to sources.

Musk has a longstanding association with the “X” brand, having used it for his former online banking startup, X.com, which later became PayPal, and even referring to one of his children as X.