XAI (company)

X.AI Corp., doing business as xAI, is an American startup company working in the area of artificial intelligence (AI). Founded by Elon Musk in March 2023, its stated goal is "to understand the true nature of the universe".

History
In 2015, Musk was the founding co-chairman at the non-profit AI research company OpenAI. He reportedly committed to invest as much as $1 billion in OpenAI, but stepped down from the board in 2018 after an unsuccessful bid to take over its management, the result of a disagreement over AI safety.

xAI was founded by Musk  in Nevada on March 9, 2023, and has since been headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Igor Babuschkin, formerly associated with Google's DeepMind unit, was recruited by Musk to be Chief Engineer.

Musk officially announced the formation of xAI on July 12, 2023. He linked the date (7 + 12 + 23 = 42) to the book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, 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".

In December 2023, in a U.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. Despite the filing, Musk later claimed via X that xAI was not seeking any funding.

In May 2024, xAI was reported to be looking for $6 billion of funding. Later that same month, the company secured the support of various venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital and Tribe Capital.

In May 2024, Musk predicted that AI will make most jobs obsolete, requiring a high universal income.

In June 2024, The Greater Memphis Chamber announced xAI is planning on building the world's largest supercomputer in Memphis, TN.

Products
While 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.

On November 4, 2023, xAI unveiled Grok, an AI chatbot that is integrated with X. xAI stated that when the bot is out of beta, it will only be available to X's Premium+ subscribers.