X.AI Corp.,doing business asxAI,is an Americanpublic-benefit corporation[3]working in the area ofartificial intelligence(AI).[4][5]Founded byElon Muskin March 2023, its stated goal is "to understand the true nature of the universe".[6]
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xAI | |
Company type | Private |
Industry | Artificial intelligence |
Founded | March 9, 2023[a] |
Founder | Elon Musk |
Headquarters | San Francisco Bay Area,California ,United States |
Key people |
|
Products | |
Number of employees | c. 1,000(2025) |
Website | x |
Footnotes / references [1][2] |
History
editxAI was founded by Musk[7][8][9]inNevada[4]on March 9, 2023, and has since been headquartered in theSan Francisco Bay Areain California.[10] Igor Babuschkin, formerly associated with Google'sDeepMindunit, was recruited by Musk to be Chief Engineer.[11]
Musk officially announced the formation of xAI on July 12, 2023.[12][13]He linked the date (7 + 12 + 23 =42) to the bookThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxybyDouglas Adams,[14]in which a supercomputer calculates that the answer to the ultimate question of "life, the universe, and everything"is 42; and to the company's mission" to understand the universe ".[15][6]
In December 2023, in aU.S. Securities Exchange Commission(SEC) filing, xAI revealed that it had raised US$134.7 million in outside funding out of a total of up to $1 billion.[16][17]Despite the filing, Musk later claimed viaXthat xAI was not seeking any funding.[18]
In May 2024, xAI was reported to be looking for $6 billion of funding.[19]Later that same month, the company secured the support of variousventure capitalfirms, includingAndreessen Horowitz,Lightspeed Venture Partners,Sequoia CapitalandTribe Capital.[20][21]
In May 2024, Musk predicted that AI will make most jobs obsolete, requiring a highuniversal income.[22]
In June 2024, theGreater Memphis Chamberannounced xAI is planning on buildingColossus,the world's largest supercomputer inMemphis, Tennessee.[23]After a 122-day construction, the supercomputer went fully operational in December 2024. Local government in Memphis has voiced concerns regarding the increased usage of electricity, 150megawattsof power at peak, and while the agreement with the city is being worked out, the company has deployed 14 VoltaGridgas generatorsto temporarily enhance the power supply.[24]Environmental advocates state that the gas-burning turbines emit large quantities of gases causing air pollution, and that xAI has been operating the turbines illegally without the necessary permits.[25][26]
As of August 2024[update],Musk diverted a large number ofNvidiachips which had been ordered byTesla, Inc.to X and xAI.[27]
On December 23, 2024, xAI raised an additional $6 billion in a funding round supported byFidelity,BlackRock,Sequoia Capital,among others, making its total funding over $12 billion.[28]
On February 10, 2025, xAI and other investors made an offer to acquireOpenAIfor $97.4 billion.[29]
Products
editWhile xAI's stated goal is "to understand the true nature of the universe", one of its immediate objectives is to create an AI that is capable of advanced mathematical reasoning, something not found in current models as of 2023.[30]
On November 4, 2023, xAI unveiledGrok,an AIchatbotthat is integrated withX.xAI stated that when the bot is out ofbeta,it will only be available to X'sPremium+subscribers.[31][32]
On November 6, 2023, xAI released PromptIDE, an integrated development environment (IDE) designed for prompt engineering and interpretability research, offering tools like aPythoncode editor and rich analytics to empower users in exploring and refining prompts forlarge language modelslike Grok-1.[33][34][35]
In March 2024, Grok was made available to all X Premium subscribers; it was previously available only to Premium+ subscribers.[36][37]
On March 17, 2024, xAI released Grok-1 asopen source.[38][39]
On March 29, 2024, Grok-1.5 was announced, with "improved reasoning capabilities" and a context length of 128,000 tokens.[40]
On April 12, 2024, Grok-1.5 Vision (Grok-1.5V) was announced. Grok-1.5V is able to process a wide variety of visual information, including documents, diagrams, graphs, screenshots, and photographs.[41][42]
On August 14, 2024, Grok-2 was made available to X Premium subscribers.[43]It is the first Grok model with image generation capabilities.[44]
On October 21, 2024, xAI released anapplications programming interface(API).[45]
On December 9, 2024, xAI released atext-to-image modelnamedAurora.[46]
On February 15,Elon Musk,the founder of xAI, announced the release of Grok 3, and Grok 3 currently tops LLM leaderboards.[citation needed]
Partners
editA16Z, Blackrock, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Kingdom Holdings, Lightspeed, MGX, Morgan Stanley, OIA, QIA, Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners, and Vy Capital, among others.[47]
Notes
edit- ^The company was incorporated on this date. It was not officially announced until July 12, 2023.
References
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- ^"PromptIDE".x.ai.Archivedfrom the original on November 15, 2023.RetrievedNovember 11,2023.
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- ^"Privacy policy".x.ai.Archivedfrom the original on November 19, 2023.RetrievedNovember 7,2023.
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- ^Isaacson, Walter(September 12, 2023).Elon Musk.Simon & Schuster. pp.605–606.ISBN978-1-9821-8128-4.Archivedfrom the original on November 26, 2023.RetrievedNovember 28,2023.
- ^Vynck, Gerrit De (July 15, 2023)."Musk's new AI company, xAI, will aim to solve scientific mysteries".Washington Post.ISSN0190-8286.Archivedfrom the original on July 17, 2023.RetrievedJuly 17,2023.
- ^Mark, Charles."Openaiinsiders".Archivedfrom the original on July 29, 2024.RetrievedNovember 29,2023.
- ^Gairola, Ananya."How Elon Musk's xAI Launch Date Pays Tribute To Douglas Adam's 'Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy'".Benzinga.Archivedfrom the original on September 23, 2023.RetrievedSeptember 9,2023.
- ^Musk, Elon [@elonmusk] (July 12, 2023)."And what are the most fundamental unknown questions?"(Tweet). Archived fromthe originalon August 6, 2023.RetrievedSeptember 1,2023– viaTwitter.
- ^Silberling, Amanda."Elon Musk is looking to raise $1 billion for xAI".Archivedfrom the original on December 6, 2023.RetrievedDecember 6,2023.
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- ^"Elon Musk says his AI firm xAI is not raising funds 'right now'".reuters.December 6, 2023.RetrievedSeptember 6,2024.
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- ^Hammond, George; Kinder, Tabby (May 23, 2024)."Elon Musk's xAI secures new backing from Andreessen, Lightspeed, Sequoia and Tribe".Financial Times.Archivedfrom the original on September 1, 2024.RetrievedMay 24,2024.
- ^"Musk's xAI seeking to raise $6 bln in Andreessen Horowitz-backed funding, FT reports".Reuters.May 23, 2024.
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- ^"Musk's xAI operating gas turbines without permits at data center, environmental group says".Reuters.August 28, 2024.
- ^"Environmentalists urge health department to take action on xAI".Memphis Local, Sports, Business & Food News | Daily Memphian.Archivedfrom the original on October 1, 2024.RetrievedSeptember 10,2024.
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