3 takeaways from Elon Musk's xAI all-hands, from a moon city to a company restructuring
X.com
- Elon Musk outlined xAI's new structure after the SpaceX merger.
- xAI is planning a Moon base for its data centers, echoing Google's space ambitions.
- XChat and XMoney apps are set for launch over the next few months, says Musk.
XAI just had its first all-hands meeting since its merger with SpaceX.
In the recorded event on Tuesday night, CEO Elon Musk outlined a new organizational structure — the main Grok product and Grok Voice, Grok Code, Grok Imagine, and the company's Macrohard project. The all-hands was later posted on X on Wednesday.
From a plan to build a catapult, or mass driver, on the moon to soothing nerves after the restructuring, here are the main takeaways from xAI's latest all-hands meeting.
1. Addressing the restructure
There are now only six members left of an original founding team of 12 at xAI, following two more exits earlier this week.
Musk addressed the new restructuring.
"Because we've reached a certain scale, we're organizing the company to be more effective at this scale," said Musk. "Now, naturally, when this happens, there are some people who are better suited for the early stages of a company and less suited for the later stages."
On Monday, Tony Wu announced his resignation in a post on X, writing that it was "time for my next chapter." Less than 24 hours later, fellow cofounder Jimmy Ba followed suit, posting that Tuesday was his last day and thanking Musk for "bringing us together on this incredible journey."
2. Shooting from the moon
Musk is promising the moon, literally.
"Ultimately, we see a path to maybe launching as much as a terawatt per year of compute from earth, but what if you want to go beyond a mere terawatt per year?" said Musk. "In order to do that, you have to go to the moon."
His goal is to launch AI sattelites from the moon, he told employees.
"I can't imagine anything more epic than a mass driver on the moon and a self-sustaining city on the moon, and then going beyond the moon to Mars, going throughout our solar system, and ultimately being out there among the stars and visiting all these star systems," Musk added. "Maybe we'll meet aliens."
Google CEO Sundar Pichai is also researching the feasability of data centers in space, citing limited resources on Earth, such as water and electricity. Data centers are already facing backlash for driving up utility costs for average households.
3. Product updates and launches
A stand-alone app for XChat and a new transaction app called X Money are coming in the next few months, according to Musk.
During the all-hands meeting, Musk said that users who only want to use the messaging function could use the standalone XChat app without visiting the X platform. He said the app will also be on desktop and can handle multi-user video calls.
"For XMoney, we actually had XMoney live in closed beta within the company, and we expect in the next month or two to go to a limited external beta and then to go worldwide to all X users," said Musk.
"And this is really intended to be the place where all the money is, the central source of all monetary transactions," Musk added. "So it's really going to be a game changer."