X.AI Corp.,

doing business as A trade name, trading name, or business name is a pseudonym used by companies that do not operate under their registered company name. The term for this type of alternative name is fictitious business name. Registering the fictitious name with ...

xAI, is an American public-benefit corporation working in the area of

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

(AI),

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

and

technology Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...

. It was founded by

Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a businessman. He is known for his leadership of Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk has been considered the wealthiest person in th ...

in March 2023.

History

Financial history

xAI was founded by Musk on March 9, 2023, and has since been headquartered in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

in California. Igor Babuschkin, formerly associated with

Google DeepMind DeepMind Technologies Limited, trading as Google DeepMind or simply DeepMind, is a British–American artificial intelligence research laboratory which serves as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Founded in the UK in 2010, it was acquired by Goo ...

unit, was recruited by Musk to be Chief Engineer. Musk officially announced the formation of xAI on July 12, 2023. 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 Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

firms, including

Andreessen Horowitz AH Capital Management, LLC (commonly known as Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z) is an American privately held venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of M ...

Lightspeed Venture Partners Lightspeed Venture Partners is a global venture capital firm focusing on seed stage, early stage investments and growth stage investments in the enterprise, fintech, consumer and healthcare sectors. Lightspeed has eleven offices globally and as o ...

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, specializing in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. the firm had appro ...

and Tribe Capital. , Musk was diverting a large number of

Nvidia Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...

chips that had been ordered by

Tesla, Inc. Tesla, Inc. ( or ) is an American multinational automotive and clean energy company. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, it designs, manufactures and sells battery electric vehicles (BEVs), stationary battery energy storage devices from h ...

to X and xAI. On December 23, 2024, xAI raised an additional $6 billion in a funding round supported by

Fidelity Fidelity is the quality of faithfulness or loyalty. Its original meaning regarded duty in a broader sense than the related concept of '' fealty''. Both derive from the Latin word , meaning "faithful or loyal". In the City of London financial m ...

BlackRock BlackRock, Inc. is an American Multinational corporation, multinational investment company. Founded in 1988, initially as an enterprise risk management and fixed income institutional asset manager, BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager ...

, among others, making its total funding over $12 billion. On February 10, 2025, xAI and other investors made an offer to acquire

OpenAI OpenAI, Inc. is an American artificial intelligence (AI) organization founded in December 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. It aims to develop "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence (AGI), which it defines ...

for $97.4 billion. On March 17, 2025, xAI acquired Hotshot, a

startup A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to ...

working on AI-powered video generation tools. On March 28, 2025, Elon Musk announced that xAI acquired sister company X Corp., the developer of the X (formerly Twitter) social media platform, which was previously acquired by Musk in October 2022. The deal, an all-stock transaction, valued X at $33 billion, with a full valuation of $45 billion when factoring in $12 billion in debt. Meanwhile, xAI itself was valued at $80 billion. Both companies were combined into a single entity called X.AI Holdings Corp. On April 24, 2025, xAI's website began to list jobs for the X platform. Previously, positions at X would be listed exclusively on X.

Environmental impact

In June 2024, the

Greater Memphis Chamber The Greater Memphis Chamber is an organization in Memphis, Tennessee, which attempts to improve business to business relationships. The organization also helps companies understand the advantages of doing business in Memphis. Mission The mission o ...

announced xAI was planning on building

Colossus Colossus, Colossos, or the plural Colossi or Colossuses, may refer to: Statues * Any exceptionally large statue; colossal statues, are generally taken to mean a statue at least twice life-size ** List of tallest statues ** :Colossal statues * ...

, the world's largest supercomputer in

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in Shelby County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. Situated along the Mississippi River, it had a population of 633,104 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of municipalities in Tenne ...

. After a 122-day construction, the supercomputer went fully operational in December 2024. Local government in Memphis has voiced concerns regarding the increased usage of electricity, 150

megawatts The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named in honor o ...

of power at peak, and while the agreement with the city is being worked out, the company has deployed 14 VoltaGrid portable methane-gas powered generators to temporarily enhance the power supply. Environmental advocates say that the gas-burning turbines emit large quantities of gases causing air pollution, and that xAI has been operating the turbines illegally without the necessary permits. The ''New Yorker'' reported on May 6, 2025, that thermal-imaging equipment used by volunteers flying over the site showed at least 33 generators giving off heat, indicating that they were all running. The truck-mounted generators emit the same pollutants as other gas-combustion devices, including nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde.

Products

According to Musk in July 2023, a

politically correct "Political correctness" (adjectivally "politically correct"; commonly abbreviated to P.C.) is a term used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in society. ...

AI would be dangerously misleading, citing as an example the fictional

HAL 9000 HAL 9000 (or simply HAL or Hal) is a fictional artificial intelligence character and the main antagonist in the '' Space Odyssey'' series. First appearing in the 1968 film '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'', HAL ( Heuristically Programmed Algorithmic C ...

from the 1968 film '' 2001: A Space Odyssey''. Musk instead said that xAI would be "maximally truth-seeking". Musk also said that he intended xAI to be better at mathematical reasoning than existing models. On November 4, 2023, xAI unveiled

Grok ''Grok'' () is a neologism coined by the American writer Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961 science fiction novel '' Stranger in a Strange Land''. While the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' summarizes the meaning of ''grok'' as "to understand intuit ...

, an AI

chatbot A chatbot (originally chatterbot) is a software application or web interface designed to have textual or spoken conversations. Modern chatbots are typically online and use generative artificial intelligence systems that are capable of main ...

that is integrated with X. xAI stated that when the bot is out of

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...

, it will only be available to X's Premium+ subscribers. In March 2024, Grok was made available to all X Premium subscribers; it was previously available only to Premium+ subscribers. On March 17, 2024, xAI released Grok-1 as

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

. On March 29, 2024, Grok-1.5 was announced, with "improved reasoning capabilities" and a context length of 128,000 tokens. On April 12, 2024, Grok-1.5 Vision (Grok-1.5V) was announced. On August 14, 2024, Grok-2 was made available to X Premium subscribers. It is the first Grok model with image generation capabilities. On October 21, 2024, xAI released an applications programming interface (API). On December 9, 2024, xAI released a

text-to-image model A text-to-image model is a machine learning model which takes an input natural language prompt and produces an image matching that description. Text-to-image models began to be developed in the mid-2010s during the beginnings of the AI boom ...

named

Aurora An aurora ( aurorae or auroras), also commonly known as the northern lights (aurora borealis) or southern lights (aurora australis), is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly observed in high-latitude regions (around the Arc ...

. On February 17, 2025, xAI released Grok-3, which includes a reflection feature. xAI also introduced a websearch function called DeepSearch. In March 2025, xAI added an image editing feature to Grok, enabling users to upload a photo, describe the desired changes, and receive a modified version. Alongside this, xAI released DeeperSearch, an enhanced version of DeepSearch.

Notes

References

External links

* {{Generative AI Elon Musk Artificial intelligence companies American companies established in 2023 Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area 2023 establishments in California Proprietary software