Musk Launches AI Chatbot "Grok2" to Catch Up with OpenAI
Plans to Invest in AI Supercomputer
Aims to Expand Scale Tenfold
Altman Focuses on Developing SNS Platform
Inevitable Competition with Musk's X
WSJ: "This Will Be the Highest-Stakes Battle"
“Back in 2015, Sam Altman and Elon Musk proudly showcased their bromance?a close friendship and bond between men. Now, they are engaged in a brawl. The question is who will seize the leadership in artificial intelligence (AI). These two are the protagonists of the fiercest and highest-stakes battle in industrial history.” (February 21 · The Wall Street Journal (WSJ))
As OpenAI ventures into developing a social networking service (SNS) similar to X (formerly Twitter), tensions between Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, are expected to flare up once again. The American IT media outlet The Verge reported on the 16th (local time) that “OpenAI is developing an SNS platform similar to X, envisioning a platform where users can share and communicate through images centered around ChatGPT’s image generation capabilities.” The tech industry anticipates that Altman’s SNS challenge will intensify conflicts with Musk.
The relationship between CEO Altman and CEO Musk dates back to the early 2010s. At that time, Musk had made a fortune from founding the online payment service PayPal and was laying the foundations for SpaceX and Tesla. Altman admired Musk and visited the SpaceX factory several times to share his concerns. Conversations about AI were a main topic. In 2014, the two concluded that “it is impossible to stop AI that surpasses human capabilities.” They also agreed, “If it can’t be stopped, then we should do it.” Finally, in December 2015, as a result of their long-standing deliberations, OpenAI was established. Musk invested $50 million to help stabilize OpenAI and joined as an initial board member.
The turning point in their previously friendly relationship was the power struggle within OpenAI between 2017 and 2018. WSJ reported, “Musk wanted more control and aimed to become the de facto CEO of the company. People inside OpenAI hesitated about this, and Altman actually persuaded other co-founders behind the scenes to support him becoming CEO. This was a power struggle among the early co-founders, and Altman emerged victorious.”
Especially since last year, hostility between the two has escalated into verbal attacks. Musk called Altman a “fraud Sam” (November 16 last year) and said he had “crazy eyes” (February 12). He also expressed hostility toward OpenAI, calling it “turned into a devil” (October 3 last year) and “a monster paralyzing the market” (November 14 last year). Altman did not remain silent either. In November last year, he mocked Musk by posting on X a scene where Musk’s xAI chatbot service “Grok” answered that “Kamala Harris would be a better president than Donald Trump.”
Musk is trying hard to catch up with OpenAI. In August last year, Musk’s xAI released the AI chatbot “Grok2,” which surpassed the then top-tier OpenAI “ChatGPT-4 Turbo” and Google’s “Gemini Pro 1.5” in performance. Musk also declared he would pour astronomical amounts of money into the effort. He announced plans to increase the scale of “Colossus,” the world’s largest AI supercomputer used by xAI, by tenfold. This means increasing the number of NVIDIA’s high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs) “H100” from 100,000 to 1 million.
On January 20 this year, the day of President Trump’s inauguration, Altman led the announcement of the “Stargate” project, a $500 billion AI development investment, which decisively provoked Musk. Altman contacted President Trump through SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison to announce the project. Musk was unaware that his rival was conducting such a project. WSJ reported, “Musk was furious, telling those around him, ‘How did I not know this? Altman couldn’t have secured the funding for this project.’ True to his nature, Musk expressed his displeasure about the deal on X and publicly announced his first break with President Trump.” Later, Musk publicly poured cold water on the project, saying, “They (OpenAI and other Stargate participants) actually don’t have that kind of money.”
Currently, their conflict has escalated into litigation. In November last year, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman, claiming “OpenAI violated its promise to operate as a nonprofit and asked to block its conversion to a for-profit corporation.” In February this year, through an investor consortium he leads, Musk made Altman uncomfortable by offering to acquire a controlling stake in OpenAI for $97.4 billion (139 trillion won). This is less than one-third of OpenAI’s recent valuation of $300 billion. On the 9th of this month, OpenAI filed a countersuit asking to stop Musk, stating, “Musk is using every possible means to harm OpenAI.”
WSJ attributed the fight between the two by saying, “From a political perspective, it is a question of who will set the AI agenda alongside President Trump,” adding, “The sovereign wealth fund created by President Trump and the U.S. government budget are huge prizes when these companies try to raise billions of dollars to build data centers nationwide, making the political stakes enormous.”
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
