How Elon Musk’s Xai Is Quietly Taking Over X

When Elon Musk launched his ain AI startup, xAI, he touted a cardinal advantage complete his competitors: entree to nan immense trove of accusation from his precocious acquired societal media level Twitter. By implementing caller API fees connected nan web he quickly renamed X, Musk locked retired different AI companies, maintaining exclusive entree for his ain models. And he began utilizing X’s millions of users to proceedings nan results.

Musk has been utilizing this distribution transmission since xAI launched its first type of nan Grok ample relationship model, adding features for illustration trending communicative summaries and AI-generated questions connected posts arsenic well as releasing nan Grok chatbot (initially) to X users exclusively. Now, a slew of caller AI features is coming. Per nan findings of reverse technologist Nima Owji, nan level appears to beryllium processing AI-powered position enhancements, including a characteristic that lets Grok modify your tweets. The chatbot besides appears to beryllium adding location-based queries, letting users inquire astir things nearby, for illustration marketplace stores.

xAI’s takeover of nan level erstwhile known arsenic Twitter is truthful unmistakable that moreover its branding has crept into X’s astir visible existent estate, pinch “xAI Grok” now commanding salient placement successful nan app’s main toolbar — a striking awesome of really Musk’s AI ambitions personification recreation to predominate nan societal network. An xAI worker poked nosy astatine their company’s expanding presence, sharing an image of X’s timeline overrun pinch nan xAI logo.

xAI and X personification perchance nan closest and astir analyzable narration of each of Musk’s companies. On paper, each xAI staffers are too X labour (but not nan different measurement around); connected apical of entree to nan codification base, they personification institution laptops from X and look successful nan platform’s Workday HR package arsenic X employees. After X vacated its flagship San Francisco HQ successful September, nan staffers moved into xAI HQ astatine nan Stanford Research Park successful Palo Alto. X offers xAI an instant pipeline to millions of users — acold overmuch businesslike than building Grok’s assemblage from scratch. With xAI’s precocious acquired Colossus cluster of 100,000 GPUs, deploying AI features crossed X has too spell overmuch technically feasible.

Musk has a history of creating intertwined, interdependent companies. Tesla and SpaceX banal engineering expertise, for instance, and aft Musk acquired Twitter, Tesla and Boring Company teams were a communal show successful its offices. Proponents of Musk spot this a superb strategical advantage. Critics logic that nan intricate relationships betwixt his ventures could create conflicts of interest, blur nan lines of accountability, and expose nan companies to shared vulnerabilities.

The narration betwixt X and xAI is complex, pinch varying levels of collaboration betwixt their teams, sources show The Verge. While Musk holds abstracted meetings pinch immoderate X and xAI engineers, nan people of day-to-day believe betwixt nan companies remains unclear. For six months, xAI brought connected ex-Meta and Discord merchandise leader Nikita Bier to line AI implementation connected X’s platform, including nan summation of AI-generated questions to posts — notably, Bier worked exclusively pinch xAI, seldom engaging pinch X’s team. (Before Grok’s release, X had considered building its ain generative AI squad nether Musk’s comparative James). Some talent does recreation betwixt nan companies — LinkedIn shows xAI recruited 2 X engineers successful September.

The backing raised for xAI is abstracted from what is raised for X, a setup that highlights their stark value successful value. xAI has seen meteoric growth, reportedly securing a $50 cardinal valuation and efficaciously doubling its worthy successful specified months. Meanwhile, X has struggled to support value. Its astir caller worker banal grants successful October 2023 weighted nan institution astatine $19 billion, small than half of Musk’s $44 cardinal acquisition price. X employees, who received RSUs astatine $45 per share, personification been waiting complete a twelvemonth for caller banal grants while watching their sister company’s valuation soar. During xAI’s first backing round, Musk said investors successful X would own 25 percent of xAI, but that hasn’t materialized for X labour who ain X stock.

And while xAI benefits tremendously from its nexus to X, it’s unclear whether X users personification benefited overmuch from xAI. Not agelong aft X rolled retired nan Grok-powered Stories feature, it began spitting retired garbage: it produced headlines that claimed Vice President Kamala Harris was changeable aft nan attempted assassination of Donald Trump; misunderstood a bunch of shitposts astir New York Mayor Eric Adams, saying he deployed 50,000 constabulary officers to an earthquake; and erroneously claimed successful an AI-generated header “Iran Strikes Tel Aviv pinch Heavy Missiles.” (Grok, obviously, isn’t nan only AI activity pinch this problem.)

Despite nan unconventional entangling of nan 2 companies, it’s improbable that nan 2 will afloat merge anytime soon. The ideology down xAI is nan acquainted starry-eyed futurism that runs dense successful nan tech scene: open-source superintelligence, meteoric growth, and SpaceX-level powerfulness successful AI (or, astatine least, that’s what Musk sounded astatine an xAI recruiting statement a less months ago). It’s precisely nan benignant of audacious moonshot that makes Silicon Valley’s apical talent and deepest pockets bladed guardant successful their chairs.

Meanwhile, astatine X, immoderate staffers joke that they’re nary longer Musk’s favourite child. That overmuch is clear successful nan product. His dream of making it into an “everything app” has grounded to materialize, nan plans to motorboat costs features personification stalled, advertisers proceed to alert from Musk’s controversies, and upstarts for illustration Bluesky and Threads frighten X’s dominance. The separation keeps Silicon Valley’s newest moonshot untethered from nan messy reality of moving a societal network.

The level Musk claims he bought to protect free reside now seems to work a different intent entirely: a backstage testing crushed for his AI ambitions. It’s an unconventional arrangement. But it seems to suit Musk perfectly.