Elon Musk is passionate about a new ambition that isn’t at electric car company Tesla.

In a rare company-wide meeting last Wednesday, Elon Musk laid out his vision for xAI, the two-year-old startup that is trying to compete with rivals in the field of artificial intelligence.

In the soaring tone that has characterized his AI dreams for more than a decade, Musk said he wanted to build systems that “search for maximum truth,” while also revealing plans to create a Microsoft competitor called Macrohard.

“We are the only company whose mission is truth,” Musk emphasized during the hour-and-a-half presentation.

“If you force AI to lie or believe things that are not true, you run a very high risk of creating a dystopian future.”

Since his split with President Trump in June, Musk, 54, has focused all his efforts on xAI, the company behind the Grok chatbot, which was recently valued at $120 billion.

He sees government as a hopeless problem, but believes AI will fundamentally change society, and has said xAI could develop technology that could power his other companies, Tesla and SpaceX.

During the summer, Musk spent most of his time at xAI’s Palo Alto, California, working in “storms” that lasted all day, even through the night, and sometimes sleeping in the office.

That focus raises questions about how much time Musk is spending on other companies, especially as Tesla’s board is pushing for a $1 trillion compensation package to encourage him to improve the electric carmaker’s performance.

On Monday, Musk posted on X: “Dad is home” and listed his schedule, which included 12 hours of meetings at Tesla and a visit to xAI’s data center.

Despite the intense focus, xAI endured a turbulent summer.

Musk immediately restructured the company, ramping up engineering hiring and eliminating or forcing many prominent researchers to leave.

Some left because they believed xAI had abandoned scientific research in favor of attention-grabbing products like chatbots that sometimes made offensive statements or “romantic AI assistants.”

Meanwhile, xAI is spending billions on technology but has no clear revenue.

Musk said Grok now has 64 million monthly users, while OpenAI’s ChatGPT attracts about 700 million weekly users.

Musk also predicted that his product will help increase X’s advertising revenue fivefold, reaching $10 billion a year.

xAI was founded by Musk in the spring of 2023 with Igor Babuschkin, a former employee of OpenAI and Google DeepMind.

The initial founding team consisted of 11 people, including professor Jimmy Ba (University of Toronto) and young Google researcher Tony Wu.

Musk attracted talent with a compensation package of millions of dollars/year.

Musk initially thought ChatGPT was “too woke” and wanted to build a rival more aligned with his political views.

He raised billions of dollars to build a supercomputer in Tennessee with 100,000 Nvidia chips, which will open in September 2024, becoming one of the world’s largest AI supercomputers.

Musk also asked for 100 engineers to be hired in 100 days, nearly doubling the size of the company.

By February 2025, xAI had built an AI system that was on par with leading chatbots by industry standards.

TROUBLE

In May, Musk complained that Grok was too “woke.” That same night, an engineer changed the code, causing the chatbot to make misleading statements about South African politics.

The company later blamed an “unauthorized change” in the source code.

In July, after an update, Grok caused another stir with anti-Semitic comments.

The company had to urgently edit to prevent it.

Also in the summer, xAI launched its $300/month premium service, SuperGrok Heavy, and “virtual romance” AI bots, which left many researchers dissatisfied and leaving because they believed the company was losing its scientific mission.

In July, Musk and CFO Mike Liberatore raised $10 billion, half of it in debt.

Just two months later, Liberatore left for OpenAI, taking several other key staff with him.

Amid the staff drain, Musk has embarked on an aggressive recruiting campaign, even offering employees 5% of their base salary for referrals.

The rewards include private trips to watch SpaceX rocket launches.

AMBITION

Musk announced the creation of Microsoft rival Macrohard and an AI product for children called Baby Grok.

He claimed Grok has been integrated into Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, which is expected to take on jobs in factories and businesses.

Musk has also publicly supported a proposal to allow Tesla to invest in xAI, with a shareholder vote expected in November.

“The reason xAI is here is because Tesla is just across the street,” Musk said.

“My prediction is: Optimus will create more goods and services than the entire global economy.”