Can Elon Musk’s X undertaking re-align itself round AI, and substitute its misplaced advert income with AI funding?
Yesterday, we reported that X is certainly now making more cash from its AI choices, and noticed a big enhance in its AI income consumption after the launch of its newest Grok 4 mannequin. However X has at all times 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 rivals within the broader AI race, it appears unlikely that xAI will have the ability to sustain with their deep pockets.
Or will it?
At present, the Wall Avenue Journal has reported that xAI is in search of an extra $12 billion in funding, largely through personal traders, to take the undertaking to the following degree.
xAI has already raised over $17 billion in funding by way of 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 undertaking, regardless of taking hundreds of thousands in donations from him, Musk has made it his private mission to destroy OpenAI nonetheless he can.
And apart from a number of authorized challenges to derail his rival, xAI is his key weapon on this combat, with Musk now centered on constructing his AI methods into an unmatched behemoth of uncooked processing energy, with a view to blowing rivals out of the water.
Certainly, Musk says that xAI is now working 230k NVidia H100 GPUs at its numerous knowledge 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 purpose is 50 million in items of H100 equivalent-AI compute (however a lot better power-efficiency) on-line inside 5 years.”
That may be some feat. 50 million items of processing energy can be virtually 150x extra highly effective than the present strongest system, which might give xAI a big benefit, although Meta can also be investing “lots of of billions” into its personal “superintelligence” initiative, and OpenAI can also be trying to safe further 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 enhancing its bot responses to higher 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 problem for not less than some big-name traders.
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 airplane of human existence.
His historical past of guaranteeing his traders become profitable additionally helps, and it could be potential that Musk will have the ability to maintain 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, will probably be troublesome for Musk to maintain up.
However this appears to be the wager. X is just not going to get its advert income again on observe, not less than 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 a substitute.
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 laborious to see all of it falling away. However possibly, xAI might be in for tougher occasions forward.
