/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23906795/VRG_Illo_STK022_K_Radtke_Musk_Void.jpg?w=696&resize=696,0&ssl=1 "Inside Elon Musk’s AI event at OpenAI’s aged headquarters")
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It had all the hallmarks of a typical recruiting event for a tech startup in San Francisco. Free food, drinks and live music were generated using the code written in real time.
But there were also mandatory metal detector checks, identity checks and security everywhere. It was run by Elon Musk at OpenAI’s original headquarters in the Mission District, which Musk co-founded before leaving after a (reportedly) failed takeover. Musk was there to convince people to join his latest startup, xAI.
The timing seemed intentional. On the same day, OpenAI hosted its annual citywide Developer Day, with CEO Sam Altman speaking to a packed room of developers a few hours earlier. Rumors swirled in Silicon Valley that OpenAI was closing in on its largest startup funding round ever, surpassing the amount Musk himself had just raised for xAI four months earlier.
At around 8:30 p.m., the AI-generated music was turned off and Musk, surrounded by security guards, climbed onto a table in separate area to address the engineers’ room. He started talking about why he founded xAI and transferred him to the same office where he helped launch OpenAI almost a decade ago.
“We want to create a digital superintelligence that is as benign as possible,” Musk said at Tuesday’s meeting, according to a partial recording of his remarks shared Edge. He then called on those gathered to “join xAI and help build intelligence and create useful applications based on that intelligence.”
For about an hour and a half, Musk answered questions from (mainly men) audience, according to people present. He stated that he believes that in a few years we will achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI); hopes to build a “supersonic jet company” next; plans to make xAI models open source approximately nine months after their release; and most importantly, he wants to act quickly. He compared xAI’s development to the SR-71 Blackbird, an aircraft that flew three times the speed of sound and provided the United States with information about the enemy during the Frosty War.
“No SR-71 Blackbird was ever shot down, and it only had one strategy: accelerate,” Musk said in the room for the post on X from the participant.
He predicted that OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI will be major players in the AI race for the next five years. The goal of the event was to find engineers responsible for the xAI API, one attendee said. Ultimately, he said he aspires to see xAI dominate in artificial intelligence like SpaceX does in rockets.
At 10 p.m., the fire brigade commander ended the recruitment campaign. Musk and his security were quickly escorted out the back door. Participants, some with OpenAI backpacks, walked out into the night with slices of pizza.
xAI launched in March 2023 on the 10th floor of Office X, Musk’s social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
He assembled a team from his other companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, as well as his 17-year-old son, cousins and son Jared Birchall, who runs his family office, The Edge he learned. Mission: surpass OpenAI and deliver a competitive multilingual model in just three months.
Since then, xAI has grown from a single floor at X to a larger office at Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto. Musk hired Igor Babuschkin, a former Google DeepMind researcher, to lead xAI. He also recruited researchers from OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta.
In May, xAI secured $6 billion in financing from several well-known investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital, valuing the company at $24 billion. Investors in X owns 25 percent of xAIthat takes advantage of the wealth of training data generated daily by the social media platform.
Musk continues to rely on external technology for Grok’s core functions
At Musk’s insistence, the first xAI model was created launched at the end of 2023 via Grok, a chatbot for X’s paid subscribers. It has since released three updates: Grok-1.5, Grok-2AND Grok-2 Mini. However, unlike competitors who had the luxury of time to develop their own systems, the Lean xAI team had to move quickly and find a quick solution. One person familiar with the development of the first model described it as a patchwork product that relied on Microsoft’s Bing for search and Meta’s open-source Llama model for query rewriting.
Musk continues to rely on external technology for Grok’s core functions. Just over a month ago, xAI announced an agreement with Black Forest Labs to provide image generation power. The feature lacked guardrails installed by other image generators, which allowed people to generate photos of everything from Taylor Swift in lingerie to Kamala Harris with a gun. Musk said in X that xAI is working on its own generator, but the partnership with Black Forest allowed it to get one up and running in Grok more quickly.
This is told by a person familiar with what xAI is working on Edge that voice and search features are on the way. The idea is that, like OpenAI and Meta’s voice modes, Grok will be able to respond. Musk also wants him to provide summaries of news shared on the X platform and trending topics.
Musk is currently facing fierce competition in the AI race for top engineering and GPU talent. As the richest man in the world, money is not an issue for him – despite the financial pressures caused by the decline in the value of satisfying enough.
Musk co-founded OpenAI with CEO Sam Altman and a group of partners in 2015, but Musk didn’t leave the board until three years later. He then cited “potential future conflict” arising from Tesla’s focus on artificial intelligence. He later claimed that he left due to disagreements with the OpenAI team. And in March, he sued the company, alleging (quite dubiously) that it had breached its contract with him and abandoned the mission. In response, OpenAI released emails between its management and Musk that revealed a power struggle in which Musk planned to take sole control of the company.
“I just don’t trust OpenAI for obvious reasons,” Musk said at a recruiting event. “It’s closed AI for maximum profit.”
The dispute between Musk and OpenAI has turned into a fierce brinkmanship game. This week, OpenAI raised $6.6 billion at a $157 billion valuation, far exceeding Musk’s historic funding round. Musk used Tesla’s GPUs to build a data center called “Colossus” and reportedly last week it put 100,000 advanced Nvidia chips online. Meanwhile, Altman embarks on a global mission, meeting with United Arab Emirates leaders, Asian chipmakers and U.S. officials raise $7 trillion for 36 semiconductor factories and data centers, all aimed at supporting OpenAI’s AGI push. Apparently after Altman’s last round of financing he asked sponsors not to invest at competitors such as xAI.
Perhaps as challenging as securing funding or computing power is securing top AI talent in Silicon Valley. The best researchers can easily make millionsand the timing has never been better to establish your own startups. Many people are guided by their own altruistic visions for the future of artificial intelligence, so the choice of a company is often based on its mission and leadership. While Musk’s fame and bold visions give him an advantage, that doesn’t mean the battle for talent is any easier.
So Musk gathered several hundred youthful engineers from rival companies OpenAI and DeepMind – some fresh from attending their competitor’s developer conference that same day – to do what he does best: sell his vision of the future.
In Musk’s world, AGI is not controlled by companies like OpenAI or Google, which keep their best models private. Instead, it is owned by him and shared with the world.
A potential advantage of working at xAI over a larger competitor like OpenAI may be the ability to move faster and take bolder risks. With a compact team and faster product turnaround times, xAI offers the chance to innovate quickly, unlike larger, more cautious companies like OpenAI and Google. It could attract those who want to see AI spread rapidly or share Musk’s technolibertarian leanings – people who reject Silicon Valley’s “wokeness” in favor of a “super hardcore” work environment that values ambition and flexibility over corporate security.
“My personal belief is that the best way to keep AI safe is to have maximum truth-seeking AI,” Musk said at a recruiting event.
Like many things at Musk’s companies, the event happened quickly. “He said he came up with the idea for the event last Wednesday and that the office was unfurnished at the time,” said one source who was at the party. However, the source called it a “general relaxing event” focused on answering questions about not only artificial intelligence but also many of Musk’s other enterprises. “Elon is committed to winning and accelerating xAI,” another source said.