AI race, xAI vs. OpenAI and Elon Musk's mission

This week, OpenAI just hit turbo mode????, pulling ahead of xAI in the high-stakes AI race, raking in $6.5 billion—outpacing Elon Musk’s $6 billion back in May. It’s like watching two masters play chess, except the board is the future of humanity, and nobody’s quite sure what happens when someone yells “Checkmate.”

Now, you might think this race is neck and neck, and you wouldn’t be wrong. xAI has caught up faster than a cheetah on Red Bull. In record time, they’ve gone from zero to “Hey, we’re right behind you, Sam!”

Sam Altman and Elon Musk have a long history that dates back to the beginning of AI. They co-founded OpenAI but later had a falling out. This history should provide context to understand their rivalry.

It's no longer secret that Sam has taken OpenAI in a different direction—less “open” and a whole lot less “non-profit.” His new motto? “Forget the competition, invest in us, we’re the future.” The rivalry is real, don't play. But here’s the kicker: Musk or Elon (whichever you prefer) is about to flip the script again next week on October 10th when he drops RoboTaxi (will discuss this in my next edition) and shows us AI in the real world. We’re talking full self-driving cars and walking robots—because nothing screams "future" quite like machines that can outthink you and beat you at table tennis right?

What Musk/Elon has that no one else does is data—and lots of it, *Whisper* google might have more*. When he bought Twitter, he didn’t just get a social media platform. Nope, he got a data firehose straight from the internet’s underbelly. Combine that with the billion frames Tesla cars collect every day, and you’ve got the kind of data set every AI researcher dreams about.

So, how’s xAI going to fit into this Frankenstein tech empire Musk’s building? Well, Elon, is that guy who doesn’t believe in silos—he’s more about mashing everything together. Need Twitter engineers to work on AI? Sure, throw them in. Tesla folks? Bring them over. Neuralink chip in the brain? Why not! His empire-building strategy is basically one giant crossover episode.

The funny part is that xAI didn’t even exist a year ago. Elon literally went from brainstorming poolside in Austin to battling the AI giants like it was just another Tuesday. Google, remember them right? They used to be AI royalty with DeepMind and Gemini, but now? It’s like watching the once-reigning champion stumble while Elon and Altman sprint past.

And don’t get it twisted—Elon’s not here to play nice, either. He might throw shade at OpenAI for not being "open," but guess what? His own AI system isn’t exactly throwing open the doors to everyone, either.

The big question is: does having a bunch of different AI companies competing make the world safer, or does it just create a Wild West of unchecked algorithms? Well, Elon thinks the more AI companies out there, the better —let them keep each other in check. It’s like saying, “Sure, let’s have a dozen police in town. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that plan, right?”

So, what’s the endgame here? Three companies? Four? Hard to say, but one thing’s for sure: running these mega language models is going to take more electricity than a small country.

At some point, we may see a few key players merge, or we may end up with three to five supercharged AIs battling it out for world domination. This would be similar to how the Big Five tech companies emerged: Alphabet (Google), Apple, Amazon, Meta (formerly Facebook), and Microsoft. Either way, grab some popcorn—it’s going to be one hell of a show.