Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and Twitter, is reportedly in the process of developing a new artificial intelligence (AI) start-up that will compete with OpenAI, the maker of the language model ChatGPT. Sources familiar with Musk's plans have said that he is currently assembling a team of AI experts and engineers to help him in his quest to join Silicon Valley's race to build generative AI systems.
In addition to recruiting a team of experts, Musk is also said to be in discussions with a number of investors from SpaceX and Tesla who are interested in putting money into his new venture. One individual with direct knowledge of the talks said that "a bunch of people are investing in it. It's real and they are excited about it."
According to Nevada business records, Musk incorporated a new company named X.AI on March 9, 2023. The company's only director is Musk himself, while the ex-Morgan Stanley banker who manages his wealth, Jared Birchall, is listed as the company's secretary. Musk has also changed the name of Twitter to X Corp in company filings, as part of his plans to create an "everything app" under the brand "X".
Sources have stated that for the new project, Musk has secured thousands of high-powered GPU processors from Nvidia, which are the high-end chips required for his aim to build a large language model. These AI systems will be capable of ingesting enormous amounts of content and producing humanlike writing or realistic imagery, similar to the technology that powers ChatGPT.
Musk's potential entry into the hot generative AI market will add yet another venture to his already diverse portfolio of responsibilities and investments. This includes running Twitter and Tesla, founding SpaceX, his $137bn rocket maker, Neuralink, a neurotechnology researcher, and The Boring Company, a tunnelling start-up.
Sources have stated that Musk is recruiting engineers from top AI labs including DeepMind, who have said that he began to explore the idea of a rival company earlier this year in response to the rapid progress of OpenAI.
Musk has already brought on board Igor Babuschkin, a former DeepMind employee, and roughly half a dozen other engineers to help him with his venture. The Information has previously reported Babuschkin's early talks with Musk.
Musk left OpenAI in 2018 after co-founding the group in 2015. Two people who were involved in OpenAI at the time said that he left the board three years later amid clashes with its management, including over attitudes to AI safety. The organisation subsequently morphed into a for-profit start-up and raised a $1bn investment from Microsoft.
Since then, Musk has become increasingly vocal in his fears of broader existential threats from AI systems. He has also publicly criticised OpenAI for becoming, in his view, less transparent and too commercially minded in its pursuit of advanced AI. Musk is particularly concerned about the threat of models such as GPT-4, OpenAI's latest release, to spew falsehoods and show political bias.
During a Twitter Spaces interview this week, Musk was asked about a Business Insider report that Twitter had bought as many as 10,000 Nvidia GPUs. "It seems like everyone and their dog is buying GPUs at this point," Musk said. "Twitter and Tesla are certainly buying GPUs."
Sources familiar with Musk's thinking have said that his new AI venture is separate from his other companies, although it could use Twitter content as data to train its language model and tap Tesla for computing resources.
While the AI team's exact position in Musk's corporate empire remains unclear, he recently moved Twitter Inc, which he bought for $44bn last year, into a new holding company, X Corp.
During this week's Twitter Spaces session, Musk enthused about Tesla's home
