Elon Musk Tries to Direct AI—Again
His latest startup follows a decade of being outmanoeuvred in his quest to steer the development of artificial intelligence
6 min
For at least a decade, Elon Musk has tried to steer the development of artificial intelligence—only to be outmanoeuvred by rivals and former allies.
He has now stepped up his efforts after the success of OpenAI, an organisation he co-founded but then left after a power struggle. Mr. Musk has warned for years that poorly built artificial intelligence could have catastrophic effects on humanity. Since OpenAI’s ChatGPT became a viral sensation last November, Mr. Musk has denounced it as politically correct and warned it could lead AI to become too powerful for humans to control.
He has called his new effort TruthGPT, and billed it as a truth-seeking artificial intelligence model that will one day comprehend the universe. On March 9, he incorporated a company called X.AI in Nevada, laying the formal groundwork.
So far, he has struggled to define a precise vision for his startup and is still in the process of assembling a team, said people familiar with the matter. Musk’s representatives have said X.AI intends to raise cash at some point from investors, the people said.
Mr. Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Two weeks after incorporating X.AI, Mr. Musk signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on the development of AI models stronger than the latest one released by OpenAI, called GPT-4. The letter was organised by the Future of Life Institute, which says its goal is to steer transformative technology away from extreme, large-scale risks. Its biggest funder is Mr. Musk.
Steven Weber, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who met Mr. Musk several years ago at a gathering of A.I. academics in Northern California, sees a consistent thread through what appear to be opposing impulses.
“He holds both of these beliefs at once: that human beings can’t be relied on to really control technology, and technology is going to advance and it needs to advance subject to his vision, more than anybody else,” Mr. Weber said.
“AI stresses me out,” Mr. Musk said at the end of a March presentation given to Tesla Inc. investors. “It’s quite dangerous technology. I fear I may have done some things to accelerate it.”
For X.AI, he hired Igor Babuschkin, a senior scientist at DeepMind, an AI lab under Alphabet Inc.’s Google, to lead the effort, people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Musk also purchased powerful computer chips similar to ones used in the technology behind ChatGPT, one of the people said.
He is still trying to attract top talent from leading labs and universities, people familiar with the matter said. Some AI researchers said they have been turned off by Mr. Musk’s struggles to turn Twitter around since acquiring the social-media company in October, as well as his public attacks on OpenAI.
Mr. Musk’s faltering attempts to steer AI’s development date back more than a decade. He has previously said he made an early investment in DeepMind, founded in 2010, to monitor its AI research rather than make money.
In late 2013, he launched a last-minute bid to purchase DeepMind, the leading AI lab at the time, but lost out to Google, according to people familiar with the talks. Mr. Musk wanted to steer the lab’s research and told associates that Google’s then-Chief Executive Larry Page couldn’t be trusted to oversee the creation of advanced AI, according to people familiar with his thinking.
DeepMind has become a central element of Google’s efforts to infuse advanced AI into its search powerhouse, and recently merged with another AI unit called Brain to form Google DeepMind. In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, Mr. Musk said he and Mr. Page used to be close friends who spent nights discussing AI safety at Mr. Page’s home in Palo Alto, Calif.
Mr. Page wanted to create a “digital god” as soon as possible, Mr. Musk said, and in their conversations called Mr. Musk a “speciesist” for saying it was important that the technology protected humanity.
Mr. Page and representatives at Google didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Musk’s interest in buying DeepMind was informal and didn’t reach the DeepMind board, according to the people familiar with the talks. It hasn’t previously been reported.
Mr. Musk co-founded OpenAI two years later with Sam Altman, the current chief executive, and several others. The organisation was founded as a nonprofit and intended to serve as a counterweight to Google, with the goal of developing AI in a safer, more transparent way than large tech companies could.
Mr. Musk served as the financial linchpin for the project and promised to make sure that OpenAI fully received the $1 billion in funding promised by early backers, people involved with the effort said. He recruited employees and met regularly with company leaders to set the vision, they said.
Mr. Musk set an aggressive research timeline for OpenAI, warning that the company’s credibility would be compromised if it didn’t achieve a major breakthrough soon after its launch, according to former employees familiar with the remarks. He often conducted polls among employees to see when they thought so-called artificial general intelligence—in which machines are able to match or surpass the intelligence of humans—could be achieved, former employees said.
In September 2017, Mr. Musk told his brother, Kimball Musk, and a longtime financial backer that he saw OpenAI and Neuralink, a startup he founded to link humans with computers through brain implants, as worthy of more of his time, according to recently released court documents related to a lawsuit against Tesla over Mr. Musk’s compensation.
“OpenAI and Neuralink are both critical to a good future for humanity. My instincts tell me that I should be devoting a much higher percentage of time to them,” Mr. Musk texted them, according to the documents. OpenAI and Neuralink at one point shared an office in San Francisco.
Mr. Musk grew frustrated with what he saw as OpenAI’s slow progress and pushed for more control of the company, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. At the time, OpenAI didn’t have a chief executive or a formal management structure.
Mr. Musk clashed with Mr. Altman, who wanted to create a for-profit arm that would allow OpenAI to raise cash from investors, people familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Musk subsequently left. Mr. Altman, who has said he considers Mr. Musk a mentor, became CEO in 2019, created a for-profit entity and raised $1 billion from Microsoft Corp.
Mr. Musk tweeted in March that he had donated around $100 million to OpenAI, though people familiar with the figure said he contributed less than $50 million.
Mr. Musk focused his AI efforts at Tesla, where he made progress in using the technology to enhance its driver-assistance systems. He said the EV maker would start introducing a fleet of robotaxis by 2020, and showcased a humanoid robot he said would feature safeguards to prevent wrongdoing by the machine.
Regulators are scrutinising Tesla’s driver-assistance software for safety problems. The company has yet to roll out robotaxis, which rely on the kind of driverless technology that Google sister company Waymo and General Motors Co.’s Cruise LCC have begun to deploy.
Mr. Musk grew more publicly critical of OpenAI after the company released ChatGPT last fall, accusing the company of being a “maximum-profit company” controlled by Microsoft. “Not what I intended at all,” he tweeted.
In a March 28 interview with the Journal, Mr. Altman said OpenAI took its safety obligations seriously.
“We spent more than six months after we finished GPT-4 to safety test, to align it, to really probe its capabilities, at a time when I believe some of the [Future of Life Institute] letter signatories were even, you know, pushing us to release it faster,” Mr. Altman said. He declined to specify which signatories he meant but said seeing those names prompted “some eye rolls.”
In early 2023, Mr. Musk texted Mr. Altman that he was starting a rival AI effort, according to people familiar with the exchange. Mr. Altman wished him well but said he didn’t understand how a new lab would allay Mr. Musk’s concerns about AI development, they said.
One OpenAI board member, Shivon Zilis, stepped down in part due to a conflict of interest with Mr. Musk’s new AI efforts, said people familiar with the matter. Ms. Zilis is also an executive at Mr. Musk’s Neuralink and had twins with Mr. Musk in 2021. Ms. Zilis didn’t respond to a request for comment.
After ChatGPT’s release, Mr. Musk said on Twitter that he cut off OpenAI from access to a pipeline of Twitter data, which OpenAI could potentially use for training the AI models powering ChatGPT. “I just learned that OpenAI had access to Twitter database for training,” Mr. Musk tweeted in early December. “I put that on pause for now.” People familiar with OpenAI say the company didn’t use this Twitter data to train its models.
A few days later, Mr. Musk visited OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters at Mr. Altman’s invitation and the two had what turned into a lengthy discussion about the Twitter decision, among other topics, according to current and former OpenAI employees.
At one point, an OpenAI researcher showed Mr. Musk how Twitter could potentially use ChatGPT. Mr. Musk brought one of his toddlers and a nanny, some of the people said, and he and the nanny took turns bouncing the child on their laps when the child grew fussy.
He struck a benign tone with employees, who found him wandering around the kitchen and hallways with his security detail, the employees said.
In one conversation, Mr. Musk entertained the idea that the universe was a computer simulation, they said. Soon after, he left the building.
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Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation CEO Kristina Keneally says Australia’s culture of large-scale philanthropy is becoming more sophisticated as Gold Dinner raises $75.5 million for children’s health, research and innovation.
3 min
Australia’s wealthiest donors are becoming more strategic, more ambitious and increasingly focused on creating measurable impact, according to Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation chief executive Kristina Keneally.
Speaking after the 2026 Gold Dinner, held last week in Sydney, Keneally said Australia was experiencing a significant shift in how major philanthropy is viewed, with large-scale giving increasingly part of conversations about leadership, legacy and social impact.
The annual Gold Dinner, now in its 29th year, brought together some of the country’s most influential business leaders, philanthropists and cultural figures, raising $75.5 million and counting in support of the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network.
While the event has become one of Australia’s most prestigious fundraising gatherings, Keneally said its significance extends far beyond a single evening.
“Gold Dinner, the flagship event of Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation, represents far more than a single evening. It is a powerful demonstration of what a committed community can achieve together over 12 months,” she said.
“The strength of that community, and the trust built over nearly three decades, means people return not just for the event, but for the impact they know it delivers.”
A NEW ERA OF PHILANTHROPY
Large-scale philanthropy has long been a feature of American society, where charitable foundations and major donors often play a prominent role in funding medical research, education and social programs.
Keneally believes Australia is moving in a similar direction.
“Australia is building a stronger culture of large-scale philanthropy, but it is still evolving compared to the United States, where giving at scale is more deeply embedded and widely recognised,” she said.
She said the country’s philanthropic landscape was becoming more sophisticated as successful business leaders increasingly sought opportunities to create meaningful change through their giving.
“In Australia, while generosity has always been strong, large-scale giving has historically been less visible, but that is changing rapidly as more leaders embrace philanthropy as a powerful way to drive meaningful outcomes.”
According to Keneally, events such as the Gold Dinner are helping reshape public perceptions of philanthropy by demonstrating the tangible outcomes that major donations can achieve.
“Gold Dinner is helping to reshape how philanthropy is perceived in Australia, making it more visible, more aspirational and more connected to real-world outcomes,” she said.
WHERE THE MONEY GOES
The funds raised through Gold Dinner support clinical care, research and innovation across the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network.
Over the past 12 months, more than $75.5 million has been raised to help fund advanced medical equipment, innovative care models and world-leading medical research. Areas of focus include precision medicine and early diagnosis, where emerging technologies are already changing how childhood illnesses are detected and treated.
Keneally said the impact is felt directly by children and families facing some of the most difficult moments of their lives.
“For children and families, this translates into very real and immediate impact. It means faster diagnoses, earlier access to life-saving treatments, and care that is more personalised and effective,” she said.
“It also ensures hospitals are equipped not just to respond to illness, but to reimagine what care can look like, giving children the best possible chance not only to survive, but to live full, healthy lives.”
BUSINESS LEADERS BACKING CHANGE
One of the defining characteristics of Gold Dinner is the calibre of its supporters.
The event has evolved into a meeting point for influential leaders from business, culture and philanthropy, many of whom see charitable giving as an extension of their professional and personal legacy.
“It speaks to a community that is not only generous, but increasingly ambitious in how it gives, combining influence, expertise and purpose to achieve outcomes at scale,” Keneally said.
Among the major supporters of this year’s event were Presenting Partner, John-Paul Nassif Foundation; Major Partners, ABC Bullion, Shaw and Partners Financial Services and One Circular Quay by Lendlease; and Premier Partner, Range Rover, whose ongoing support reflects a shared philosophy of legacy and long-term impact.
The evening also featured performances, premium hospitality experiences and fundraising initiatives designed to encourage further support for children’s health services and research.
LOOKING BEYOND NEW HOSPITALS
With major new children’s hospital developments at Randwick and Westmead progressing, Keneally said the focus is increasingly turning towards what comes next.
“The long-term vision is to ensure every child has access to world-leading healthcare, care that continues to evolve through innovation, research and global collaboration,” she said.
The foundation’s future priorities include accelerating medical discovery, expanding access to cutting-edge treatments and helping position New South Wales as a global leader in children’s health.
Keneally said the Gold Dinner remains central to achieving those ambitions because it does more than raise money.
“Gold Dinner is critical to making that vision possible. It not only provides significant funding, but also unites a powerful network of supporters who are driving the future of philanthropy in Australia,” she said.
As Australia’s culture of philanthropy continues to mature, Keneally believes that the network will play an increasingly important role in shaping the future of healthcare for generations to come.
“The result is a community that is helping to shape the future of paediatric care, not just for today’s patients, but for generations to come.”
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