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The head of xAI had some rallying words for his staff during a meeting in San Francisco last week. If the company can make it through the next two to three years, it’ll come out on top against its competitors, according to several people who were there.
The CEO told workers that ramping up computing power and data storage fast would be what separates winners from losers in the race to build superintelligence, AI that’s smarter than humans. That’s how xAI becomes the most powerful AI company.
He thinks the company might hit artificial general intelligence in just a few years, maybe even by 2026. AGI is when AI can think as well as people do, or better, across all sorts of tasks.
Grok 5 gets 10% chance at AGI
Back in November, Musk said xAI’s Grok 5 model had about a 10% shot at reaching AGI. The company wants to get that model out early next year.
Staff learned xAI will have something going for it that others don’t: access to around $20 billion to $30 billion every year in funding. Plus, it benefits from being connected to the CEO’s other companies. Tesla started putting Grok in its vehicles earlier this year.
People who attended the meeting told Business Insider the boss seemed pretty happy about where things stand. One person called the whole thing “peppy.”
The conversation got wild at times. There was talk about building data centers in space and colonizing Mars. He even floated the idea that Tesla’s Optimus robots could run those space data centers one day.
He’s mentioned before that Optimus might help with SpaceX missions next year. Google’s CEO and OpenAI’s CEO have both talked publicly about space data centers too, though Google’s boss admitted it’s a long shot.
xAI sent back an automated message when asked for comment: “Legacy Media Lies.”
Colossus expansion and the AGI arms race
The company’s been expanding its data center project, called Colossus, really fast over the past year. It had about 200,000 graphics processing units earlier this year and wants to grow that to 1 million.
Plenty of companies are racing to build AGI right now, trying to justify valuations in the hundreds of billions. Even with the CEO’s huge public profile, xAI is still pretty new compared to heavyweights like OpenAI and Google.
Things aren’t slowing down. Earlier this month, OpenAI reportedly went into emergency mode, pushing out its latest model. Google dropped a new Gemini model in November, and as Cryptopolitan reported, xAI has been cranking out new Grok versions one after another.
At the meeting, xAI’s leadership showed off updates to products like Grok Voice, their app for Tesla owners, and the company’s AI agents. The improvements included better prediction abilities, upgraded listening for the voice feature, and video editing tools.
Despite burning cash at a furious rate, Musk remains confident xAI’s infrastructure push and financial backing will see it through the critical years ahead.
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