The crazy means deployed by Elon Musk to catch up in AI

© QubixStudio/Shutterstock.com

xAI is one of the most recent artificial intelligence (AI) startups. However, it has already risen to second place in terms of valuation, just behind OpenAI. Elon Musk obviously does not intend to stop there; the billionaire aims to surpass his great rival, even if it means deploying colossal resources to achieve this.

Spectacular growth

Because one thing seems obvious, Musk has not digested the meteoric rise of the ChatGPT editor. He actually has very strained relations with the management of OpenAI, which he co-founded in 2015 and then left three years later. Since then, the entrepreneur has been very critical of the startup, particularly with regard to the involvement of Microsoft, which supported it to the tune of several billion dollars.

This case is now being played out in court, with the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla having filed several complaints against the management of OpenAI. But he also intends to confront it directly on the ground. As early as early 2023, the businessman assured that he wanted to develop an artificial intelligence called ” TruthGPT “, which would make it possible to understand ” the profound nature of the universe “. At the same time, he castigated the conversational agents of Google and others, considered too ” wokes “.

It was with this in mind that he founded xAI in the summer of 2023, alongside AI bigwigs like Igor Babuschkin, a veteran of Google’s DeepMind research lab and OpenAI. A year and a half later, the startup has raised a total of $12 billion, bringing its valuation to $50 billion. In the field of AI startups, only OpenAI does better with its $157 billion valuation.

© Rokas Tenys/Shutterstock.com

Elon Musk bets on his other businesses to propel xAI

The entrepreneur spared no expense in achieving such results. Grok was launched just a few weeks after xAI was founded. The model, based on a character from a science fiction work, stands out from the competition thanks to its offbeat sense of humor and sarcasm.

When it was launched, however, its performance was lower compared to that of other major models, but Elon Musk has relied on one of his strengths to overcome his limitations: his other companies. For example, xAI reached an agreement with Tesla to access a share of its revenue in exchange for access to its technology and resources.

But it was especially the role of X, formerly Twitter, that proved crucial in the deployment of AI. Initially, Musk decided to make it accessible only to the platform's paying subscribers. He recently moved up a gear by allowing all users of the social network to converse with Grok. Enough to increase its number of users by millions. Since this week, the AI ​​also has its own dedicated application in certain countries.

The model also has access to all the data posted on X, and this in real time. This gives it a serious advantage over the competition, believes the businessman.

That's not all. According to the Wall Street Journal, xAI powers customer support functions for SpaceX's Starlink internet service. It is also expected to help create new AI functions for X's search engine.

© Unsplash/Mariia Shalabaieva

The Colossus feat

The race for AI is being played out on another front, the one chips. And Elon Musk understood this well. As early as 2023, he asked Nvidia, the undisputed leader in AI accelerators, to reallocate 12,000 GPUs reserved for Tesla to X and xAI. A request if abrupt that it directly affected the chipmaker's supply chain.

Musk also used his knowledge to approach Oracle, headed by his friend Larry Ellison, with the aim of accessing some of the company’s GPUs. He even pressured the company to release even more. But these various maneuvers did not satisfy him.

In the spring of 2024, the entrepreneur turned his sights to Memphis, Tennessee, where he decided to transform a disused factory in the city into a data center specifically dedicated to his startup’s AI. The work was completed in record time, despite the fears of some locals regarding the pollution caused by the installation.

Colossus was inaugurated in September, only a few months after the start of construction. It is quite simply the most powerful supercomputer in the world. Equipped with 100,000 Nvidia H100 processors when it opened, it has since been gradually supplemented by 100,000 additional H100s, in addition to 50,000 H200s, the manufacturer's even more advanced AI processors.

For now, Grok remains behind its big rivals from a commercial point of view, but Elon Musk's objective is clear, precise and precise: to design the most powerful AI in the world, “in every way“. And his key role in the Trump administration could give him an advantage in carrying out this project.

📍 To not miss any Presse-citron news, follow us on Google News and WhatsApp.

[ ]