According to a state filing, Elon Musk has formed a new artificial intelligence firm called X.AI Corp. that is incorporated in Nevada. The company has authorized the sale of 100 million shares for private ownership, and Mr. Musk is the sole listed director, while Jared Birchall, the director of Musk’s family office, serves as the secretary.
The name of the enterprise, X.AI, is a nod to Mr. Musk’s ambition to develop an all-in-one application referred to as X. Recently, Twitter, which is also owned by Mr. Musk, changed its name to X Corp. and incorporated in Nevada, instead of its previous domicile in Delaware, as outlined in a legal filing last week. X Corp. operates under a parent company named X Holdings Corp.
Legal experts have suggested that Nevada’s laws provide greater flexibility and safeguarding to a company’s executives and officers in comparison to Delaware.
When asked for a comment on X.AI, Elon Musk did not respond. The billionaire entrepreneur has previously expressed concerns about the potential risks associated with AI technology and has called for government regulations to manage these risks.
To achieve his AI aspirations, Elon Musk has been actively recruiting researchers in recent months, with the aim of establishing a competing enterprise to OpenAI, the AI company that launched the widely popular chatbot ChatGPT in November. According to sources familiar with the recruitment efforts, OpenAI has generated a significant level of investor interest in the industry.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2013 but left the company in early 2018 following a power struggle with its current CEO, Sam Altman. Mr. Musk has expressed concerns about political biases in OpenAI’s ChatGPT and has shared his intention of developing AI models that prioritize truth-seeking, although he has not publicly disclosed the specifics of such models.
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In his recent endeavors, the CEO of Tesla Inc. has recruited Igor Babuschkin, a scientist from Alphabet Inc.’s artificial intelligence lab DeepMind, to lead his new initiative. However, Elon Musk’s efforts to attract employees from OpenAI to join the new lab have not been very successful, according to sources familiar with the situation. The Information previously reported on Mr. Babuschkin’s appointment.
The success of Elon Musk’s new lab would result in yet another contender in the ongoing race among tech giants to develop more potent artificial intelligence models. OpenAI recently launched GPT-4, an AI model that imitates human reading and writing and surpassed the performance of most individuals on standardized tests such as LSAT. This technology is also being integrated into the latest version of Microsoft Inc.’s Bing search engine. Google, Amazon.com Inc., and others have also declared their AI initiatives.
Last month, Elon Musk joined some AI researchers and tech executives in calling for a six-month or longer suspension on advanced AI technology developments, which advocates argue would provide the industry with sufficient time to establish safety standards for AI design and prevent potential hazards.
Mr. Musk has a deep connection with the name X. The online banking startup he founded, which later merged with another company and became PayPal, was originally named X.com. Additionally, he refers to one of his children as X.
