Timeline of xAI

This is a timeline of xAI, a company founded by Elon Musk with the mission to develop and advance artificial intelligence technologies with a focus on understanding and addressing complex challenges in the universe. The company aims to create advanced AI models and tools, such as the Grok series of conversational AI models, to push the boundaries of what artificial intelligence can achieve in various domains.

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Time period	Development summary	More details

Full timeline

Year	Month and date	Event type	Details
2023	March 9	Company Formation	xAI is founded by Elon Musk in Nevada, with its headquarters established in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. The company aims to "understand the true nature of the universe."
2023	July 12	Official Announcement	Elon Musk officially announces the formation of xAI. He links the date (7 + 12 + 23 = 42) to "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams, which emphasizes the number 42 as the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. This connection is tied to xAI's mission to understand the universe.
2023	18 August	Grok-0	The first flagship model, Grok-0, is completed. It is a 33B parameter dense transformer architecture.
2023	3 November	Grok-1	The early-access release of the conversational AI Grok and the Grok-1 model is announced. Hundreds of early-access users begin using Grok.
2023	November 4	Product Launch	xAI unveils Grok, an AI chatbot integrated with the X platform. Initially released in beta, xAI announces that Grok would be available exclusively to X's Premium+ subscribers once the beta phase concluded.
2023	November 6	PromptIDE	The early-access release of PromptIDE, an integrated development environment for prompt engineering, is announced.
2023	November 6	Product Launch	xAI released PromptIDE, an integrated development environment (IDE) designed for prompt engineering and interpretability research. PromptIDE includes tools such as a Python code editor and rich analytics, enabling users to explore and refine prompts for large language models, including Grok-1.
2023	15 November	Grok API	The first SDK is released and close partners begin using the Grok API.
2023	7 December	Grok on X	X users subscribed to X Premium+ are given access to use Grok on the X website and apps.
2023	December	Funding Disclosure	xAI discloses in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that it has raised $134.7 million in outside funding, out of a potential total of $1 billion. Despite this, Elon Musk would later claim on X (formerly Twitter) that the company was not seeking any funding.
2024	March 17	Grok-1 open source release	xAI announces the open release of Grok-1, a 314 billion parameter Mixture-of-Experts large language model. Grok-1's base model weights and architecture are available under the Apache 2.0 license, marking it as a significant contribution to the open-source community. The model, trained from scratch using JAX and Rust, is not fine-tuned for specific tasks but provides a raw checkpoint from its pre-training phase completed in October 2023. Instructions for accessing and using Grok-1 are provided on GitHub, and the release includes a cover image generated with Midjourney.
2024	March 28	Grok-1.5	The improved flagship model, Grok-1.5, is completed. It demonstrates enhanced performance in reasoning and coding.
2024	March 29	Product Upgrade	xAI announces Grok-1.5, an upgraded version of the AI model featuring improved reasoning capabilities and a significantly expanded context length of 128,000 tokens.
2024	March	Product Expansion	Grok is made available to all X Premium subscribers, expanding access beyond the previously limited Premium+ subscriber base.
2024	12 April	Grok-1.5V	Vision capabilities are added to Grok-1.5, allowing it to reason about interleaved natural language and images.
2024	April 12	Product Upgrade	Grok-1.5 Vision (Grok-1.5V) is announced. This version of the model can process a wide range of visual information, including documents, diagrams, graphs, screenshots, and photographs.
2024	15 May	Grok-1.5 on X	Grok-1.5 becomes available on X, continuing the integration of advanced AI features for users.
2024	May 25		xAI partners with Oracle to develop a supercomputer aimed at advancing artificial intelligence capabilities. The collaboration aims to create a "Gigafactory of Compute," supporting the growth of xAI's model, Grok. Musk plans to increase funding for xAI from $4 billion to $6 billion, targeting an $18 billion valuation due to investor interest. The partnership is expected to significantly boost xAI's GPU capacity, from 10,000 to 100,000 units, enhancing the efficiency of Grok. Musk envisions that xAI will compete with AI industry leaders and that by 2025, AI may surpass humans in all tasks.
2024	May 27		xAI secures $6 billion in new funding, increasing its valuation to $24 billion. The investment round, which includes major contributions from Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, aim to support xAI's market entry, infrastructure development, and future technology research. xAI's funding reflects the growing investor interest in AI technology despite the challenges faced in the field. During this time, Musk also predicts that AI will make most jobs obsolete, leading to a need for universal basic income.
2024	June	Infrastructure Development	The Greater Memphis Chamber announces that xAI plans to build the world's largest supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee. The supercomputer, expected to be the most advanced AI model, is scheduled to become fully operational in December 2024. However, the project raises concerns regarding electricity usage, with peak power demands reaching 150 megawatts. To address these concerns temporarily, the company deploys 14 VoltaGrid gas generators.
2024	July 23		xAI starts training its AI model, GROK 3, using 100,000 liquid-cooled NVIDIA H100 GPUs, which he calls the "most powerful AI training cluster in the world." Training begins in Memphis at 4:20 AM, utilizing the current-gen H100 GPUs on a single RDMA fabric. This step follows xAI's decision to end its server deal with Oracle and build its own supercomputer infrastructure. Musk expects GROK 3 to be ready by December 2024, surpassing its predecessor, GROK 2, which used 20,000 GPUs. The move marks a significant leap in AI training capabilities for xAI.
2024	August	Product Launch	Grok-2 is made available to X Premium subscribers. This new version introduces image generation capabilities, marking a significant advancement in the Grok series.
2024	September 3		xAI unveils its new AI training system, Colossus, equipped with 100,000 Nvidia H100 graphics cards. Colossus is described by Musk as the world’s most powerful AI training system, potentially surpassing the U.S. Energy Department’s Aurora system. The system's H100 GPUs, known for their high performance, are capable of running language models up to 30 times faster than previous generations. xAI plans to expand Colossus to 200,000 chips, including newer H200 GPUs with improved speed and memory. This upgrade aims to enhance AI model development, with xAI targeting the release of its next large language model, Grok-3, by year-end.
2024	September 28		xAI new data center in Memphis starts incorporating Nvidia chips. These chips are pivotal in powering the data center's AI capabilities, providing the computational power necessary for machine learning tasks, deep learning algorithms, and other AI-driven applications. Nvidia’s chips are considered industry-leading for AI computations, making this partnership a noteworthy development in the AI infrastructure landscape.
2024	November 7		The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) board approves an additional 150 megawatts of power for xAI’s facility in Memphis, where xAI plans to expand its AI training center. The facility, featuring the powerful "Colossus" supercomputer, represents a major capital investment in Memphis. By this time, community members had raised environmental concerns, particularly over pollution impacts, while TVA and xAI had committed to measures like a water treatment plant to address potential harm.

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