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 the immense trove of information from his recently acquired societal media level Twitter. By implementing caller API fees connected the 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 trial the results.

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

xAI’s takeover of the 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 prominent placement successful the app’s main toolbar — a striking awesome of really Musk’s AI ambitions person travel to predominate the societal network. An xAI worker poked nosy astatine their company’s expanding presence, sharing an image of X’s timeline overrun pinch the xAI logo.

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

Musk has a history of creating intertwined, interdependent companies. Tesla and SpaceX stock engineering expertise, for instance, and aft Musk acquired Twitter, Tesla and Boring Company teams were a communal show successful its offices. Proponents of Musk see this a brilliant strategical advantage. Critics reason that the intricate relationships betwixt his ventures could create conflicts of interest, blur the lines of accountability, and expose the 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 some X and xAI engineers, the grade of day-to-day practice betwixt the companies remains unclear. For six months, xAI brought connected ex-Meta and Discord merchandise leader Nikita Bier to guideline AI implementation connected X’s platform, including the 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 relative James). Some talent does travel betwixt the 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 quality 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 the institution astatine $19 billion, little than half of Musk’s $44 cardinal acquisition price. X employees, who received RSUs astatine $45 per share, person 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 labor who ain X stock.

And while xAI benefits tremendously from its nexus to X, it’s unclear whether X users person benefited overmuch from xAI. Not agelong aft X rolled retired the Grok-powered Stories feature, it began spitting retired garbage: it produced headlines that claimed Vice President Kamala Harris was changeable aft the 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 the only AI work with this problem.)

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

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

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