departure of xAI co-founders; Elon Musk turns his focus to the moon

While the fledgling company xAI is faced with the frequent departure of its co-founders and is on the verge of merging with SpaceX and the historic initial public offering, Elon Musk announced in a nationwide meeting with employees that the company’s focus has changed to the moon and plans to build a production facility on the moon to develop artificial intelligence satellites; He described this program as the key to achieving unrivaled computing power.

According to The New York Times, which cited the content of this meeting, Elon Musk has announced that the xAI company needs to establish a factory on the moon to be able to produce artificial intelligence satellites and launch them into space using a huge catapult. He stated that “to reach a level of intelligence that is difficult to imagine, we have to go to the moon” and described this goal as one of the most exciting projects of the company.

xAI artificial intelligence factory on the moon

However, Musk did not provide clear details on how the factory will be built or how the merged xAI and SpaceX entity will be managed and reorganized. Emphasizing only the speed of the company’s movement, he said that xAI is ahead of any competitor and can take the leadership of the technology field. It also noted that some employees are better suited for the early stages of the company, while others will be more capable of contributing to advanced stages and future developments.

xAI’s AGM comes as two key founders, Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba, have left the company less than a day after each announced their departure. With this incident, the number of separated founding members reached 6 out of a total of 12. The splits have been described as amicable and financially lucrative for the departing founders, especially given SpaceX’s plans for an initial public offering worth roughly $1.5 trillion this summer.

At the same time, Elon Musk changed the company’s focus from a Mars mission to building a self-growing city on the moon, making the announcement on Sunday before the Super Bowl. He stated the reason for this strategic change is the long time it took to realize the Martian colony, more than 20 years, and said that similar results can be achieved on the moon in half of this time. The decision is a major leap for a company that has never sent a mission to the moon in its 24-year history, and represents a major shift in the long-term priorities of xAI and SpaceX.

Some investors find data centers in Earth orbit more attractive than colonization programs on other planets, however, according to one xAI investor, the company’s lunar ambitions are not separate from the main mission and are in line with Elon Musk’s long-standing goal of creating the most powerful model in the world. This model is designed based on real and proprietary data that competitors are unable to replicate and benefits from the synergy of companies such as Tesla in the field of energy and road topology, Neuralink in brain data, SpaceX in orbital physics and mechanics, and The Boring Company in subsurface data.

However, the realization of this vision and the legal framework related to it are still questionable, because according to the 1967 treaty, ownership of the moon by no country or company is possible. At the same time, a 2015 US law allows mining and ownership of resources extracted from the moon, a distinction that is controversial and not all countries follow the rules. At the same time, Musk’s team, which is supposed to advance these projects, is getting smaller day by day.