Elon Musk, who has hinted for months that he wants to build an alternative to the popular ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot, announced the formation of what he’s calling xAI, whose goal is to “understand the true nature of the universe”.

xAI to be supported by exes from AI industry

On a website, xAI said its team will be led by Musk and staffed by executives who have previously worked at a broad range of companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence, including Google’s DeepMind, Microsoft and Tesla, as well as academic institutions such as the University of Toronto.

Musk and Jared Birchall, who operates Musk’s family office, incorporated a business called X.AI in March, according to a Nevada state filing with the Secretary of State. Musk has frequently publicly criticised OpenAI, the highest-profile AI startup and developer of ChatGPT.

In April, the Financial Times reported that Musk was holding discussions with Tesla and Space Exploration Technologies investors about helping fund an AI startup, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. The billionaire has acquired thousands of processors from Nvidia for the new project, the paper said.

Despite his work around AI, Musk was among a group of researchers and tech industry leaders who earlier this year called for developers to pause the training of powerful AI models.