Elon Musk Has Created New Artificial Intelligence Company ‘X.AI’

Elon Musk has his sights set on challenging OpenAI in the artificial intelligence startup space with the creation of a new AI company, X.AI Corp, The Financial Times reports(Opens in a new window). 

According to sources familiar with Musk’s plans, the Twitter and Tesla CEO is putting together a team of AI experts, researchers, and engineers for the venture. Recent hires include two researchers from Alphabet-owned DeepMind. One of those researchers is scientist Igor Babushckin who is reportedly leading the research. 

Per business records, the Nevada-listed company was incorporated on March 9. Musk is reportedly listed in the documents as its sole director, while ex-Morgan Stanley banker and Musk’s money manager Jared Birchall is its secretary. 

The AI startup is said(Opens in a new window) to be part of a wider plan to create a so-called everything app under the brand “X”. Earlier this week, Musk announced Twitter Inc had been merged into new umbrella company X Corp, with its domicile shifting from Delaware to Nevada. 

Musk, who helped found OpenAI eight years ago but left in 2018 is now largely critical of it and its ChatGPT software. The Tesla and SpaceX mogul recently complained that ChatGPT was too “woke”, and criticized it as a “closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft.” In a tweet(Opens in a new window) in February, he hinted at an alternative, saying: “What we need is TruthGPT.”

Musk was also the co-sponsor of an open letter by tech executives and AI researchers who called for a minimum six-month pause on the development of AI technology more powerful than GPT-4, OpenAI’s latest AI language model. That letter was in turn slammed by well-known AI ethicists for allegedly ignoring the current harms that AI poses such as worker exploitation, data theft, and fake media that supports current power structures and their further concentration in fewer hands.

As The Wall Street Journal notes(Opens in a new window), Musk has an affinity with naming ventures, and offspring ‘X’. In fact, the precursor to PayPal was called X.com and he also calls one of his children X.