Since OpenAI launched its ChatGPT model in late 2022, AI remains the biggest revolution to hit Wall Street, and arguably society. Musk was one of the cofounders of OpenAI, but in February 2023, he publicly disowned the startup after it received its latest multibillion-dollar investment from Microsoft. In July 2023, Musk launched xAI as an alternative to OpenAI, with a team of engineers from some of his biggest rivals, including Microsoft and Google. The goal of xAI is to create an AGI, or artificial general intelligence, that can understand the universe. Musk and Sam Altman, the fired and rehired CEO of OpenAI, are racing against each other to build a “superintelligent” AI that’s smarter than humans but still aligns with human interest.
But since Musk is also running the controversial DOGE project to cut the federal government, and five other companies, how does he find time to oversee xAI? The answer is he relies on trusted lieutenants to run the AI startup, which in December raised $6 billion in new funding, at a valuation of more than $40 billion. You can see a full list in the chart below.
Like many Musk companies, xAI is not very forthcoming with information and did not respond to requests for comment. Fortune relied on news reports, government documents and filings, as well as social media posts including LinkedIn and X, to compile its list of executives. We attempted to contact everyone. Scroll past the chart to see a list of power players at Musk’s other companies and at DOGE.
Read more:
- The top power players at SpaceX, Elon Musk's space tech company
- The top power players at X, Elon Musk's social media company
- The top power players at Neuralink, Elon Musk's brain tech startup
- The top power players at Tesla, the biggest of Elon Musk’s six companies
- The top power players at Elon Musk's tunnel firm The Boring Company
- The top power players at Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)
This story has been updated from a version that was originally published in November 2023.