- Tesla CEO Elon Musk is working to launch an artificial intelligence company to compete with OpenAI, the Financial Times reported Friday.
- Musk has reportedly acquired thousands of Nvidia GPUs and is recruiting AI researchers and engineers.
- Musk, once a major investor in OpenAI, split with OpenAI over issues of progression, direction, and control.
On January 27, 2023, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his security personnel depart the company’s local offices in Washington.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Tesla CEO Elon Musk plans to launch an artificial intelligence startup that will go head-to-head with OpenAI, the Financial Times reported Friday.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter, has built a team of researchers and engineers, and is speaking to several investors, according to the Financial Times. He has also reportedly hired from other top AI companies, including DeepMind, which is owned by Alphabet.
“It’s true and they’re excited about it,” a source familiar with the matter told the Financial Times.
According to reports, Musk has secured thousands of NVIDIA GPU processors. These chips are an integral part of building a large-scale language model (LLM) that competes with OpenAI’s GPT. Musk said in his Twitter Spaces interview with the BBC this week that he would buy his company’s processors.
“At this point, everyone and their dogs seem to be buying GPUs,” Musk said. “Twitter and Tesla are certainly buying GPUs.”
Musk was once a major financial backer of OpenAI, pledging $1 billion over multiple years, according to a previous Semafor report. But at the same time that OpenAI added a for-profit business segment, Musk withdrew its financial and operational commitments to the artificial intelligence company. Microsoft invested his $1 billion in OpenAI shortly after Musk parted ways with the group, and pledged billions of new dollars earlier this year.
Musk openly questions the approach of OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT. In March, Musk signed an open letter calling for an immediate six-month suspension of any research on OpenAI’s AI models higher than his GPT-4. He states that AI is “one of the greatest risks to the future of civilization.”
Musk’s reported venture could be the latest entrant to an increasingly crowded space. Beyond Microsoft and Google, Amazon announced Thursday that it will enter the generative AI space.
Musk did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Read more in the Financial Times.
