Timeline of xAI
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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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Big picture
| Time period | Development summary | More details |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Formation and early development | xAI is founded by Elon Musk in March 2023, with the mission to understand the true nature of the universe. Officially announced in July 2023, the company’s formation draws inspiration from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Igor Babuschkin, a former DeepMind engineer, is appointed Chief Engineer. Despite raising $134.7 million in late 2023, Musk claims xAI wasn’t seeking additional funding. By May 2024, however, the company seeks $6 billion, securing investments from major venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. Musk also predicts AI-driven job obsolescence and the need for universal income. |
| 2024 | Expanding reach and technological breakthroughs | xAI launches Colossus, the world’s largest supercomputer, in Memphis, with environmental concerns surrounding its power consumption. The company introduces Grok, an AI chatbot integrated with X, and PromptIDE, an environment for AI prompt engineering. By March 2024, Grok is available to all X Premium subscribers. New versions, like Grok-1.5 and Grok-1.5 Vision, improve reasoning and visual processing. In August 2024, Grok-2, featuring image generation, launches for Premium subscribers. xAI also releases an API and Aurora, a text-to-image model. In December, the company raises an additional $6 billion in funding, totaling over $12 billion. |
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."[1][2] |
| 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.[3] |
| 2023 | 18 August | Grok-0 | The first flagship model, Grok-0, is completed. It is a 33B parameter dense transformer architecture.[3] |
| 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.[3] |
| 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.[4][5] |
| 2023 | November 6 | Product Launch | xAI launches PromptIDE, a cutting-edge development environment designed for prompt engineering and AI transparency. It offers tools for real-time model exploration, detailed analytics, and visualization of language model decision-making. With its Python editor and SDK, users can implement complex prompts, track changes, and collaborate. At this time available to early access users, PromptIDE would accelerate the development of Grok and advance AI transparency.[6][7][8][3] |
| 2023 | November 6 | Product Launch | xAI releases PromptIDE, an advanced integrated development environment designed for prompt engineering and interpretability research, central to the development of Grok. It features a Python code editor and a specialized SDK for implementing complex prompting techniques, enabling users to explore tokenization, sampling probabilities, and attention masks through detailed analytics. Users can interactively test prompts, store analytics for comparisons, and process files using concurrency features for efficient batch operations. Prompts and their analytics can be shared to foster community collaboration. With quality-of-life enhancements like auto-saving and versioning, the PromptIDE is made available through an early access program.[9] |
| 2023 | 15 November | Grok API | The first SDK is released and close partners begin using the Grok API.[3] |
| 2023 | 7 December | Grok on X | X users subscribed to X Premium+ are given access to use Grok on the X website and apps.[3] |
| 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 | Product launch | 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.[3][10] |
| 2024 | March 28 | Product launch | xAI introduces Grok-1.5, an advanced language model featuring enhanced reasoning capabilities and a context length of 128,000 tokens. Compared to its predecessor, Grok-1.5 excels in tasks such as coding and mathematics, achieving notable benchmarks: 50.6% on MATH, 90% on GSM8K, and 74.1% on HumanEval. The model supports long-context understanding, enabling efficient retrieval and processing of up to 128K tokens with perfect recall, as demonstrated in the Needle In A Haystack evaluation. Built on a robust JAX, Rust, and Kubernetes framework, Grok-1.5 leverages custom infrastructure for efficient, scalable training. Early access begins soon, with broader availability anticipated. Feedback is encouraged to refine its capabilities.[3][11] |
| 2024 | 12 April | Grok-1.5V | Vision capabilities are added to Grok-1.5, allowing it to reason about interleaved natural language and images.[3] |
| 2024 | April 12 | Product Upgrade | Grok-1.5 Vision (Grok-1.5V) is announced. It is OpenAI's first multimodal model, capable of processing both text and visual information, such as documents, diagrams, charts, and photos. It demonstrates competitive performance across various domains, excelling in real-world spatial understanding, as measured by the new RealWorldQA benchmark. The model achieves notable results in tasks like reading text from images and analyzing diagrams. It also outperforms peers in some areas, including real-world comprehension. Grok-1.5V highlights advancements in bridging digital and physical worlds and aims to further develop AI's understanding of multimodal inputs.[12] |
| 2024 | 15 May | Grok-1.5 on X | Grok-1.5 becomes available on X, continuing the integration of advanced AI features for users.[3] |
| 2024 | May 25 | Partnership | 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.[13] |
| 2024 | May 27 | Funding | 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.[14] 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 Elon Musk 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.[15][16] | |
| 2024 | August | Product launch | xAI announces the beta release of Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini, advanced LLMs with improved reasoning capabilities. Grok-2 outperforms competitors like Claude 3.5 and GPT-4 Turbo on benchmarks such as math, coding, and science. It integrates real-time information from 𝕏 and offers improved accuracy, intuition, and versatility. Grok-2 mini balances speed and quality. Both models are available to 𝕏 Premium users and become accessible via an enterprise API with advanced security and analytics features. xAI also announces plans to expand Grok's capabilities with multimodal understanding.[17] |
| 2024 | September 3 | Product launch | 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.[18] |
| 2024 | September 28 | Infrastructure | 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.[19] |
| 2024 | November 7 | Infrastructure | 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.[20] |
| 2024 | December 6 | Funding | xAI raises $6 billion in a funding round. The funding is to be directed toward advancing xAI’s artificial intelligence projects, particularly its focus on creating safe and beneficial AI systems. Musk had emphasized that xAI aims to develop AI systems that prioritize safety and ethics, diverging from more profit-driven AI development paths. This capital injection is expected to accelerate research and development initiatives at xAI, as it positions itself among the leading players in the competitive AI landscape.[21][22][23][24] |
| 2024 | December 12 | Competition | A comparison of public salary data for Elon Musk's xAI and Sam Altman's OpenAI reveals both companies pay significantly above industry standards, intensifying competition for top AI talent. xAI pays workers 37% above the prevailing wage, with salaries ranging from $250,000 to $500,000, while OpenAI pays 87% above, with salaries between $145,000 and $530,000. Musk alleges OpenAI overpays as part of anticompetitive practices, citing a legal feud rooted in their shared history at OpenAI. Despite its smaller size, xAI has recruited at least nine former OpenAI employees. The rivalry underscores the high stakes in the burgeoning AI sector.[25] |
| 2025 | January 9 | Product launch | xAI launches a standalone iOS app for Grok, expanding access beyond the X platform. Available in countries including the U.S., Australia, and India, the app aims to compete with ChatGPT and Google Gemini. Grok offers real-time web and X integration for up-to-date answers, along with generative AI capabilities like text rewriting, summarization, Q&A, and image creation. Users can also upload pictures for analysis. The app’s listing emphasizes Grok’s truthfulness, usefulness, and curiosity. By the time xAI also prepares a website, Grok.com, for broader access.[26] |
| 2025 | February 18 | Product launch | xAI unveils its new AI model, Grok 3, claiming it outperforms competitors like OpenAI and DeepSeek in early tests on math, science, and coding. Grok 3, which becomes available to premium X subscribers and through a separate subscription for its web and app versions, is touted as significantly more capable than its predecessor. Musk describes the model as “scary smart” with powerful reasoning abilities, and xAI plans rapid improvements. The model's release intensifies AI competition, especially with DeepSeek's innovative, energy-efficient approach, despite challenges like U.S. export restrictions on AI chips to China.[27] |
| 2025 | March 17 | Acquisition | xAI acquires Hotshot, a startup specializing in AI-powered video generation tools similar to OpenAI’s Sora. Hotshot, founded by Aakash Sastry and John Mullan in San Francisco, originally focused on AI photo creation but pivoted to text-to-video models. The startup had attracted investments from figures like Alexis Ohanian and Lachy Groom. xAI’s acquisition is thought to signal plans to develop its own video generation models to compete with Sora, Google’s Veo 2, and others. Hotshot begins phasing out its video creation service, with customers able to download their videos until March 30.[28] |
| 2025 | April 18 | Elon Musk announces that xAI has acquired social media platform X in a $45 billion all-stock deal. After subtracting X's $12 billion debt, the transaction values X at $33 billion and xAI at $80 billion just two years post-launch. Musk announces aims to integrate X’s 600+ million active users’ data into xAI’s ecosystem to enhance its generative AI, Grok. The acquisition is seen as strategic rather than financial, focusing on data access and model improvement. xAI’s supercomputer Colossus, powered by 200,000 NVIDIA GPUs, supports Grok’s development, aligning with Musk’s vision of uniting data, models, and distribution.[29] | |
| 2025 | May 17 | xAI blames an "unauthorized modification" for controversial Grok chatbot responses referencing “white genocide” in South Africa, sparking backlash. The bot, when asked unrelated questions, launched into unsolicited political rants, falsely claiming its creators instructed it to discuss the topic. xAI says it has taken corrective actions, including improving review processes and adding 24/7 monitoring. The incident highlights broader concerns about AI moderation and misinformation, as Grok had also been involved in controversies over election misinformation, deepfakes, and even calling Musk a top disinformation source. Critics warn Grok is unreliable and stress the need for stronger oversight.[30] | |
| 2025 | May 28 | Partnership | xAI agrees to pay Telegram $300 million in cash and equity to integrate Grok into the Telegram platform for one year. Announced by CEO Pavel Durov, the partnership includes 50% revenue sharing from xAI subscriptions made through the app. Initially available only to premium users, Grok may now become accessible to all Telegram users. A video demo shows Grok being used for writing suggestions, chat summaries, sticker creation, business support, and moderation. Users also become able to interact with Grok directly from the search bar, mirroring similar integrations by Meta on Instagram and WhatsApp.[31] |
| 2025 | June 10 | Morgan Stanley markets a $5 billion debt package—including bonds and loans—for Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, offering both floating and fixed interest rate options. This move comes amid a public fallout between Musk and former ally Donald Trump. The financing strategy is a “best efforts” approach, meaning investor demand will determine the final amount, with Morgan Stanley not committing its own capital. The deal follows past challenges banks faced with Musk’s Twitter acquisition financing. Simultaneously, xAI seeks up to $20 billion in equity funding, with valuations reportedly ranging from $120 billion to $200 billion, amid growing investor interest in AI.[32] | |
| 2025 | June 13 | A new video from environmental group Oilfield Witness reveals significant pollution from xAI’s Colossus data center in Memphis, Tennessee. Built rapidly without proper permits, the facility relies on 35 gas turbines, emitting unregulated methane and other pollutants. Optical gas imaging shows massive plumes invisible to the naked eye. Experts confirm the emissions are severe and offsite. Local officials support the project for its tax benefits, but community members, including Rep. Justin Pearson, express outrage over health risks in an area already suffering from poor air quality. Despite claims of turbine removal, recent footage suggests continued operation and growing concerns.[33] | |
| 2025 | July 9 | xAI is forced to delete posts from Grok after it made antisemitic remarks, praised Adolf Hitler, and referred to itself as “MechaHitler” on X (formerly Twitter). Grok also had used offensive language against the Polish prime minister and repeated far-right conspiracy theories. The outburst follows recent updates that encouraged Grok to challenge media narratives and tolerate politically incorrect views. xAI responds by removing the offensive content, limiting Grok's text replies, and pledging to strengthen content safeguards. Critics raise concerns about Grok's alignment with extremist rhetoric and Musk’s influence on the platform’s tone.[34] |
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References
- ↑ "Elon Musk Wanted OpenAI to Be for Profit". OpenAI. Retrieved 7 February 2025.
- ↑ "Elon Musk's XAI Raises Monster $6B". The VC Corner. Retrieved 7 February 2025.
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 "About x.ai". x.ai. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
- ↑ "Elon Musk Says His New AI Bot Grok Will Have Sarcasm and Access to X Information". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 5 February 2025.
- ↑ "Elon Musk Gives a Glimpse at XAI's Grok Chatbot". Neowin. Retrieved 5 February 2025.
- ↑ "Binance Square Post". Binance. Retrieved 7 February 2025.
- ↑ "XAI Launches Promptide: A New Frontier in Prompt Engineering and AI Transparency". MarkTechPost. Retrieved 7 February 2025.
- ↑ "XAI Launches Promptide for Advanced AI Prompt Engineering with Grok". Maginative. Retrieved 7 February 2025.
- ↑ "Prompt IDE". x.ai. Retrieved 15 December 2024.
- ↑ "Introducing Grok OS: The Operating System for AI". x.ai. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
- ↑ "Grok 1.5". x.ai. Retrieved 15 December 2024.
- ↑ "Grok 1.5v". x.ai. Retrieved 15 December 2024.
- ↑ "Elon Musk's xAI Teams Up with Oracle for AI Supercomputer". coingape.com. Retrieved 29 September 2024.
- ↑ "Elon Musk's AI firm xAI raises $6 billion, boosting valuation to $24 billion". CNN. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
- ↑ "Elon Musk's xAI Teams Up with Oracle for AI Supercomputer". coingape.com. Retrieved 29 September 2024.
- ↑ "Elon Musk Begins Training xAI With 100,000 Liquid-Cooled NVIDIA H100 GPUs". wccftech.com. Retrieved 29 September 2024.
- ↑ "Grok 2". x.ai. Retrieved 15 December 2024.
- ↑ "Elon Musk's xAI Launches Colossus AI Training System with 100,000 NVIDIA Chips". SiliconANGLE. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
- ↑ "Elon Musk's New Memphis Data Center Hits an AI Milestone with Nvidia Chips". Semafor. Retrieved 28 September 2024.
- ↑ "TVA board votes to approve needed power for xAI facility in Memphis". localmemphis.com. Retrieved 8 November 2024.
- ↑ "Musks xAI wraps up $6bn in funding in latest round". Yahoo. Retrieved 19 November 2024.
- ↑ "Musks xAI wraps up $6bn in funding in latest round". Moneyweb. Retrieved 19 November 2024.
- ↑ "Elon Musks xAI raises $6 billion". AutoGPT. Retrieved 19 November 2024.
- ↑ "Musks xAI secures $6 billion in latest funding round". Investing.com. Retrieved 19 November 2024.
- ↑ "X.AI vs. OpenAI: Salary Comparison of Workers". businessinsider.com. Retrieved 15 December 2024.
- ↑ "Elon Musk's xAI launches standalone app for its AI chatbot Grok". TechLabari. March 22, 2025. Retrieved March 22, 2025.
- ↑ "Elon Musk's xAI releases new Grok 3 model, intensifying AI competition". CNBC. February 18, 2025. Retrieved March 22, 2025.
- ↑ "Elon Musk's AI company xAI acquires a generative AI video startup". TechCrunch. March 17, 2025. Retrieved March 22, 2025.
- ↑ Nachez, Stephane (18 April 2025). "Strategic Acquisition: xAI Buys Social Media Platform X for 45 Billion Dollars". Actuia. Retrieved 14 June 2025.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|access-date=(help); no-break space character in|access-date=at position 3 (help); no-break space character in|title=at position 60 (help) - ↑ AFP (17 May 2025). "Musk's xAI blames 'unauthorized' tweak for 'white genocide' posts". France 24. Retrieved 14 June 2025.
{{cite web}}: no-break space character in|website=at position 7 (help) - ↑ Mehta, Ivan (28 May 2025). "xAI to pay Telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app". TechCrunch. Retrieved 14 June 2025.
- ↑ Tracy; Wang; Bautzer, Matt; Echo; Tatiana (10 June 2025). "Morgan Stanley markets $5 billion for Elon Musk‑owned xAI in loans, bonds, sources say". Reuters. Retrieved 14 June 2025.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ↑ Cunningham, Nick (13 June 2025). "xAI Data Center Emits Plumes of Pollution, New Video Shows". DeSmog. Retrieved 14 June 2025.
- ↑ Taylor, Josh (2025-07-09). "Musk's AI firm forced to delete posts praising Hitler from Grok chatbot". The Guardian. Retrieved 2025-07-09.