Elon Musk launches new AI firm xAI to ‘understand universe’s true nature'

Elon Musk announced the formation of xAI, a team led by Musk with executives from Google's DeepMind, Microsoft, and Tesla.

Elon Musk, who has hinted for months that he wants to build an alternative to the popular ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot, announced the formation of what he’s calling xAI, whose goal is to “understand the true nature of the universe.”

(FILES) SpaceX, Twitter and electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends an event during the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, on June 16, 2023. After years of bad press and scandal, Mark Zuckerberg is seeing his reputation spruced up in the fickle world of tech, largely thanks to the increasingly unpredictable behavior of Elon Musk. (Photo by JOEL SAGET / AFP)(AFP)

On a website, xAI said its team will be led by Musk and staffed by executives who have previously worked at a broad range of companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence, including Google’s DeepMind, Microsoft Inc. and Tesla Inc., as well as academic institutions such as the University of Toronto.

Musk and Jared Birchall, who operates Musk’s family office, incorporated a business called X.AI in March, according to a Nevada state filing with the Secretary of State. Musk has frequently publicly criticized OpenAI, the highest-profile AI startup and developer of ChatGPT.

In April, the Financial Times reported that Musk was holding discussions with Tesla Inc. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. investors about helping fund an AI startup, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. The billionaire has acquired thousands of processors from Nvidia Corp. for the new project, the paper said.

Despite his work around AI, Musk was among a group of researchers and tech industry leaders who earlier this year called for developers to pause the training of powerful AI models.