Tech pioneer Elon Musk has announced the launch of xAI, a new artificial intelligence company Musk is forming. The company is racing to launch to compete against tech industry titans Microsoft, Google, Meta, and now OpenAI in search of diversifying the AI market.
Musk took to—where else—Twitter to announce the formation of the company.
In May, Musk commented at a Wall Street Journal CEO Council event that “there should be a significant third horse in the race here,” and “more on that soon.”
Musk is aggressively recruiting researchers to compete against OpenAI, a company that he originally helped fund on the premise of open-source AI advancement. However, Musk sold his ownership stake in the early years of the company as the direction quickly changed from a non-profit to a for-profit.
Musk has claimed that he invested $100M into OpenAI; independent research, however, can only prove $50M.
The AI Race Heats Up: Microsoft, Google, Meta, OpenAI and… xAI?
The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, set off an arms race in AI across big tech. Suddenly, AI and generative AI became all the rage and have since surged tech stocks.
Microsoft has invested over $10 billion into OpenAI to deepen a partnership between the two companies and insert its tech across its Azure and 365 solutions.
Meta—who went all-in on creating and funding the Metaverse—is pivoting quickly into AI and generative AI. The company is releasing LLaMA, a 65-billion parameter large language model (LLM) to the public in its effort to “democratize AI,” according to the announcement.
Google cautiously joined the generative AI race with the release and subsequent enhancements of Bard, its large language model for commercial and consumer use that rivals ChatGPT. Since its launch, it now supports over 40 languages, can review and enhance programming code syntax, accept images in prompts, and more. The company is also introducing an enterprise-grade generative AI capability into its Workspace productivity suite.
Musk’s entry into the AI space shouldn’t come as any surprise. However, it contradicts his earlier public stance of proposing a moratorium of six months or more on developing advanced AI technology.
The ship has sailed on pausing AI advancement for the purposes of regulation, apparently.
How the world responds (and develops trust?) in Musk’s xAI company alongside his antics with Tesla, Twitter, and SpaceX remains to be seen.
