xAI’s Plan to Catch Up in AI Coding

Key Takeaways

Who are these two allstars that XAI is now turning to to rebuild their coding ambitions? Uh their names are Andrew Milick and Jason Ginsburg. Um they were both heads uh of product for engineering at Cursor uh which is you know one of these leading startups that sells AI assistants for uh developers. Um, and they're notable, you know, on their own terms, but mostly they're notable because they're they're two of the only people that are joining XAI that are notable instead of leaving uh at at the moment. >> Well, who and let's go there. Who's leaving? >> Um, this week there were two co-founders uh and they were people that were elevated just a month ago when there was this big reorg after a bunch of other co-founders left. Um so I mean the amount of turnover it was just kind of kind of staggering and and yesterday um Elon posted you know in response to the the news that we broke that um you know XAI was not built right the first time around so it's being rebuilt from the foundations up is is what you said >> I want to talk about what's happening at XAI but I I I do want to say that it does seem like turnover and big AI labs is kind of just a term that I mean the two of them synonymous now because this is true of XAI but it it is also true I think of I mean open AI and then thinking machines labs we we had that too so I I don't know it feels like a little bit of magical chairs hot potatoes here but if we come back to XAI so where are the coding ambitions for that company right now I mean do they have a product is it any good uh this is part of the the enterprise push that you've been on here talking about right >> yeah they they have a product but even Elon says that it's not very good. Um there was an interview he did on on Wednesday uh at a conference where you know he said that he recognizes that Grock is behind and he wants it to uh catch up or exceed competitors by the middle of this year. um which you know is a is a huge task especially when there's so much turnover going on but it is important for XAI because their enterprise business is is pretty tiny uh compared to to people like Anthropic and then on that post on X the idea that XAI was not built properly the first time around I mean what what do you what do you think he meant by that because he also said Tesla wasn't built right the first time around and I mean this is a company that's been around for a long Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you know, my interpretation is X AI is not in the game with OpenAI and Anthropic to the extent that he wishes they were and so he kind of is blaming everyone except himself. Uh that that would be my read of it. I mean, and it's it's extraordinary because like this is a company that was merged with SpaceX last month at a valuation of $250 billion. And you know, he he's telling investors the company is worth that much at the same time he's saying it wasn't built right. And he's about to IPO the combined company. It's it's totally wild, >> right? Although, yeah. No, I I don't have any rebuttal. I think it's a good point. try to find some sort of logic in it. But >> I mean the logic in it is that it's Elon and he has you know done this kind of thing before and he idiosyncratic leadership style like people will always >> say you know look at his record that justifies whatever he's doing and you know maybe that will turn out to be correct here but that doesn't mean that it's not extraordinary like $250 billion is like you know it's less than anthropic or open AI but it's more than like Boeing or Pepsi or something and here he is saying you know the the company wasn't built right. It's It's amazing. >> And so, do you think this has any implications for the merger, for the story that they tell in the IPO? I mean, I I sort of see it as him being able to say that, yeah, we're getting ahead of any any shortcoming that you identify in the company. I'm on top of it. Don't worry, and I'm taking the the most drastic possible steps. I mean, that's sort of how I see this playing out. I mean, I I think that's I think that's the positive uh spin on it. You know, I I think that the there there was always this question with the SpaceX XAI merger of like, you know, SpaceX is kind of the most stable and um you know, basically investors had the most positive feelings about SpaceX uh at the time that this merger happened. And XAI was this big question mark that you know we reported was burning like a billion dollars of a month last year. Um and you know all those questions about about when it's going to make money, how it's going to make money, who's in charge, like you know all of this turnover is only going to make that um you know more more salient for for investors. >> Right. Well, I want to thank you for coming on. That is Theo Wait, our Elon Musk reporter here at the information