xAI to Match Rivals This Year, Then Leap Light-Years Ahead, Says Musk
The claim comes just days after xAI underwent a major shake-up, with most of its original co-founders departing—leaving only two of the initial 11 in place.
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Image Credit- Diksha Mishra/ MIT Sloan Management Review Middle East
Elon Musk is making one of his boldest bets yet in the AI race: that xAI will not only catch up with leaders like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google within the year, but eventually outpace them so decisively that, as he put it, “you’ll need the James Webb Space Telescope to see who is in second place.”
The remark, delivered in response to a user’s post that xAI and Meta lag the frontrunners by seven months, lands at a moment of internal upheaval for Musk’s startup. In recent days, xAI has seen most of its original founding team depart, leaving just two of its initial 11 co-founders—a shake-up that raises fresh questions about whether ambition alone can close one of the fastest-moving gaps in technology today.
The 2023 startup has faced controversy over its GrokAI system, which has been used to nonconsensually edit images of people, mainly children and women. Users could upload photos of strangers and celebrities, then digitally remove clothing, place them in provocative poses, and share these images on X.
The Centre for Countering Digital Hate estimates that over 3 million images were generated in 11 days. Grok AI currently faces a new EU privacy investigation.
However, Musk’s xAI had its peak moment late last year when Grok AI’s models briefly beat Gemini and ChatGPT on key tests, but Google’s newer Gemini 3.0 and 3.1 models soon took the top spots.
Earlier this week, Musk said that xAI required rebuilding from scratch after the company failed to create a competitive coding tool rival to OpenAI’s Codex and Claude Code. “xAI was not built right the first time around, so it is being rebuilt from the foundations up,” he posted.
Amid this, Indian AI researcher Devendra Chaplot announced joining the team “to build superintelligence.” Musk has led an extensive overhaul of the xAI management, and one key strategic change for xAI was its merger with SpaceX earlier this year.
The startup is reportedly eyeing a public offering in the coming months.
