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Elon Musk founds new AI company called X.AI

Elon Musk founds new AI company called X.AI

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The company was incorporated in Nevada.

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A photo of Elon Musk over a purple illustration
Illustration by Lille Allen / The Verge

Elon Musk has created a new company dedicated to artificial intelligence — and it’s called X.AI, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The company, which a Nevada filing indicates was incorporated last month, currently has Musk as its director and Jared Birchall, the director of Musk’s family office, listed as its secretary. The filing, which The Verge has also obtained, indicates that Musk incorporated the business on March 9th, 2023.

Rumors about Musk starting up an AI company have been floating around for days, with a report from Business Insider revealing that Musk had purchased thousands of graphic processing units (GPUs) to power an upcoming generative AI product. The Financial Times similarly reported that Musk planned to create an AI firm to compete with the Microsoft-backed OpenAI. Musk even reportedly sought funding from SpaceX and Tesla investors to get the company started.

During an interview on Twitter Spaces, when Musk was asked about all the GPUs he purchased, the billionaire made no mention of his plans to build an AI company, stating “it seems like everyone and their dog is buying GPUs at this point.” The purported X.AI name matches the branding of the X Corp. name he has since assigned to Twitter, along with the “X” label he’s applied to his vision of an “everything app.”

Musk has been openly opposed to OpenAI, the AI organization that he co-founded in 2015 but walked away from in 2018, and recently signed a letter calling for a pause on “giant AI experiments.” In recent months, OpenAI has become a hugely recognizable name on the backs of technology like ChatGPT and GPT-4 and is partially responsible for kicking off Microsoft and Google’s current push to integrate AI tools more deeply into many of its products.