Elon Musk Launches AI Startup xAI With Team of Former Google, OpenAI Engineers

Billionaire Elon Musk‘s xAI on Wednesday announced the formation of the artificial intelligence (AI) startup with the launch of its website, unveiling a team made up of engineers who have worked at companies from Alphabet-owned Google to Microsoft and OpenAI.

The startup will be led by Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of Twitter, who has said on several occasions that the development of AI should be paused and that the sector needs regulation.

“Announcing formation of @xAI to understand reality,” Musk said in a tweet on Wednesday.

The website said xAI will hold a Twitter Spaces event on July 14.

Musk in March registered a firm named X.AI Corp, incorporated in Nevada, according to a state filing. 

The firm lists Musk as the sole director and Jared Birchall, the managing director of Musk’s family office, as a secretary.

The website has also listed an application form for interested candidates who want to be a part of the startup. The current team at xAI claims to have worked at multiple organisations, including “DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla, and the University of Toronto”. 

Back in April, Musk said he is seeking to build a “truth-seeking AI” that shuns political correctness, as a rival to Microsoft’s OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. However, he has also expressed concerns regarding the negative impacts of AI, calling it “the potential of civilizational destruction.”

Meanwhile, Musk has also merged Twitter with a newly created “X” shell company, keeping the brand name for the platform.