Elon Musk launches new AI company to 'understand the true nature of the universe'

Musk and the xAI team will answer questions about the new company via a Twitter Spaces chat on Friday, July 14.

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For months, Elon Musk has been leaving a trail of breadcrumbs pointing toward a bigger AI project on the horizon and today that project was formally announced. 

xAI is a new company, led by Musk, that seeks to "understand the true nature of the universe," according to the release posted on the company's website.

Announcing formation of @xAI to understand reality

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 12, 2023

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The release shared the names of a dozen xAI team members, including former employees of DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla, and the University of Toronto. The list also includes engineers Igor Babuschkin and Manuel Kroiss, who Musk hired in early March. 

xAI is a separate company from X Corp, the company Twitter merged into in April. However, the release notes that the new AI company will work closely with Twitter and Tesla, among other companies, "to make progress towards our mission." 

Today's announcement follows a series of moves that suggested a major AI project in the making, including state filings in April which revealed that Musk had created a new AI company. 

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