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 major increase 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 shifting ahead.
And with some vital rivals within the broader AI race, it appears unlikely that xAI will have the ability to sustain with their deep pockets.
Or will it?
As we speak, the Wall Road Journal has reported that xAI is in search of a further $12 billion in funding, largely by way of non-public traders, to take the undertaking to the following degree.
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 undertaking, regardless of taking hundreds of thousands in donations from him, Musk has made it his private mission to destroy OpenAI nevertheless 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 rivals out of the water.
Certainly, Musk says that xAI is now working 230k NVidia H100 GPUs at its varied knowledge facilities, that are powering the most recent Grok mannequin.
For comparability, Meta at the moment 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 increase that processing energy with its personal, proprietary processes.
“The @xAI objective is 50 million in models of H100 equivalent-AI compute (however significantly better power-efficiency) on-line inside 5 years.”
That might be some feat. 50 million models of processing energy could be virtually 150x extra highly effective than the present strongest system, which might give xAI a major benefit, although Meta can also be investing “lots 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 shifting 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 seem to be potential danger vectors for the corporate, and Elon’s willingness to toe the road on this entrance looks as if it may very well 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 making certain his traders generate profits additionally helps, and it might be attainable that Musk will have the ability to preserve securing funding for his formidable AI initiatives.
Will that guarantee AI supremacy, and thus, cash from expanded implementation of xAI’s fashions? It’s unimaginable to say, and with Meta additionally throwing money at its AI initiatives, it is going to be tough for Musk to maintain up.
However this appears to be the wager. X isn’t 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 seem to be Musk is realigning his focus onto AI funding as a substitute.
Both that’ll allow X to shift its moderation strategy, 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 may very well be in for tougher instances forward.
