Elon Musk is reportedly planning to launch an artificial intelligence company to compete with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, as Silicon Valley battles for dominance in the rapidly developing technology.
The billionaire boss of Tesla and Twitter is in the process of bringing together a team of AI researchers and engineers and is in talks with several investors about the project, according to the Financial Times.
“A bunch of people are investing in it … it’s real and they are excited about it,” a person with knowledge of the talks told the newspaper, which cited Nevada business records showing that on 9 March Musk incorporated a company called X.AI of which he is the company’s sole director.
The move, which would mean him joining tech giants Microsoft, Google and Amazon and startups including OpenAI in the fast-changing generative AI space, appears to signal a rapid change of direction. Only a few weeks ago Musk co-signed a letter in which he and more than 1,800 others demanded a six-month pause in AI research. It later emerged that some of the signatories were fake.
In company filings, Musk recently changed the name of Twitter to X Corp. The move was part of his plans to make an “everything app” branded “X”.
His business portfolio includes Twitter, Tesla, rocket maker SpaceX, neurotechnology research company Neuralink and his tunnelling project, The Boring Company.
On Friday, SpaceX was issued with a Starship launch licence, clearing the way for the first flight test of the new rocket, potentially on Monday.
For the new AI project, Musk has reportedly got thousands of high-powered GPU processors and is also said to have recruited engineers from leading AI labs, such as DeepMind.
Musk’s new startup is likely to enable him to attempt to compete with OpenAI, which Musk co-founded in 2015. He left the board after three years, reportedly as a result of clashes with management, including over AI safety.
He tweeted in 2019: “Tesla was competing for some of the same people as OpenAI & I didn’t agree with some of what OpenAI team wanted to do.”
Soon after, it became a for-profit startup and secured a $1bn investment from Microsoft. It has since attracted growing criticism from Musk over the potential existential threats generative AI may pose.
He has said he is especially concerned about the capability of models such as GPT-4, the latest release by OpenAI, to spread false information and demonstrate political bias.
Musk and OpenAI did not immediately respond to the FT or the Guardian’s requests for comment.
