Can Elon Musk’s X venture re-align itself round AI, and substitute its misplaced advert income with AI funding?
Yesterday, we reported that X is certainly now making extra money from its AI choices, and noticed a major enhance in its AI income consumption after the launch of its newest Grok 4 mannequin. However X has all the time relied on advert income, and it’ll want a heap of AI funding to not solely proceed funding Elon’s broader AI ambitions, however to additionally fund each X and xAI transferring ahead.
And with some important opponents within the broader AI race, it appears unlikely that xAI will be capable of sustain with their deep pockets.
Or will it?
At present, the Wall Road Journal has reported that xAI is in search of an extra $12 billion in funding, largely by way of personal buyers, to take the venture to the following stage.
xAI has already raised over $17 billion in funding via six funding rounds, as Elon and Co. have sought to quickly construct out their AI capability to tackle Meta, Google and OpenAI within the race for AI supremacy.
Although OpenAI stays Musk’s key goal. Spurned by OpenAI rejecting his preliminary push to turn out to be CEO of the venture, regardless of taking tens of millions in donations from him, Musk has made it his private mission to destroy OpenAI nonetheless he can.
And except for a number of authorized challenges to derail his rival, xAI is his key weapon on this combat, with Musk now targeted on constructing his AI programs into an unmatched behemoth of uncooked processing energy, with a view to blowing opponents out of the water.
Certainly, Musk says that xAI is now working 230k NVidia H100 GPUs at its varied information facilities, that are powering the most recent Grok mannequin.
For comparability, Meta presently has round 350,000 Nvidia H100 chips powering its AI initiatives, whereas OpenAI has round 200k in operation.
And on high of this, Musk says that xAI is hoping to considerably enhance that processing energy with its personal, proprietary processes.
“The @xAI objective is 50 million in models of H100 equivalent-AI compute (however a lot better power-efficiency) on-line inside 5 years.”
That may be some feat. 50 million models of processing energy can be nearly 150x extra highly effective than the present strongest system, which may give xAI a major benefit, although Meta can also be investing “tons of of billions” into its personal “superintelligence” initiative, and OpenAI can also be trying to safe extra funding.
The query then is can Elon do it? Can Elon safe sufficient funding to make xAI right into a key AI supplier, after which, will there be sufficient funding in AI initiatives to make this right into a money-making enterprise transferring ahead?
xAI is already skirting controversy, by modifying its bot responses to raised align with Elon’s private views, and launching NSFW AI companions for human/digital relationships. Each of those appear to be potential danger vectors for the corporate, and Elon’s willingness to toe the road on this entrance looks like it might be a difficulty for at the least some big-name buyers.
However Elon additionally has a cult following, with a broad spectrum of individuals nonetheless viewing him as a visionary tech genius who’s going to guide us into the following aircraft of human existence.
His historical past of guaranteeing his buyers become profitable additionally helps, and it might be potential that Musk will be capable of hold securing funding for his bold AI initiatives.
Will that guarantee AI supremacy, and thus, cash from expanded implementation of xAI’s fashions? It’s not possible to say, and with Meta additionally throwing money at its AI initiatives, it is going to be troublesome for Musk to maintain up.
However this appears to be the guess. X just isn’t going to get its advert income again on observe, at the least not on the ranges that it as soon as noticed, earlier than Musk took over, and with xAI buying X, it does appear to be Musk is realigning his focus onto AI funding as an alternative.
Both that’ll allow X to shift its moderation method, with out having to align with advertiser calls for, or it’ll see each X and xAI fail at some stage.
It’s a heap of cash, and it’s arduous to see all of it falling away. However possibly, xAI might be in for tougher instances forward.
