Elon Musk addressed xAI employees at a companywide meeting in San Francisco last week, expressing optimism about the firm's future in the race for artificial general intelligence. He emphasized the importance of scaling data centers and securing funding to outpace competitors. Musk also speculated on innovative ideas like space-based data centers.
During the all-hands gathering at xAI's San Francisco headquarters, Elon Musk, the company's CEO, shared his vision for achieving superintelligence, which surpasses human intelligence. Several sources familiar with the meeting reported that Musk stated xAI could reach artificial general intelligence—matching or exceeding human capabilities—as soon as 2026. He previously mentioned a 10% chance of AGI with the upcoming Grok 5 model, slated for early next year.
Musk stressed that surviving the next two to three years would position xAI to triumph over rivals, thanks to its rapid expansion of data centers under the Colossus project. The company currently operates around 200,000 GPUs and plans to scale to 1 million. Access to $20 billion to $30 billion in annual funding, along with synergies from Musk's other ventures like Tesla—which integrated Grok into its vehicles this year—will provide a competitive edge.
Employees described Musk as upbeat, with one calling the atmosphere 'peppy.' He also discussed futuristic concepts, including building data centers in space to support Mars colonization efforts. Musk suggested Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot could operate these extraterrestrial facilities, potentially aiding SpaceX missions as early as next year. This idea aligns with comments from Google CEO Sundar Pichai and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who have explored space data centers as a 'moonshot.'
The meeting featured demonstrations of product updates, including enhancements to Grok Voice for better listening, predictive capabilities in Grok, the Tesla owners' app, and video editing features for agents. Amid the intensifying AI race, xAI remains a newer entrant challenging leaders like OpenAI and Google, which recently released advanced models amid competitive pressures.
