xAI founder Elon Musk

On a warm night in San Francisco earlier this week, Elon Musk stood on top of a small round coffee table, bathed in purple light. Flocks of AI engineers and researchers gathered around him, some sitting on a nearby stairwell, as the billionaire pitched them on joining his fledgling AI company, xAI.

At the event, a recruitment party for prospective employees, Musk’s main selling point was speed — touting the company’s pace in developing products, and creating AI tools in a fast and nimble environment, comparing xAI to an SR-71 jet. “No SR-71 Blackbird was ever shot down and it only had 1 strategy: to accelerate,” Musk said, according to one attendee.

The location was apt: The Pioneer Building in the city’s Mission district, a 122-year-old former truck factory, and most recently, headquarters of OpenAI, the juggernaut maker of ChatGPT led by cofounder Sam Altman. xAI had just moved into the building, Musk said, attendees told Forbes.

Musk has not been shy about his beef with OpenAI. He cofounded the company with Altman and others in 2015, before leaving three years later after an alleged internal power struggle. Since then, Musk has sued the company twice, accusing the company of abandoning its mission to build artificial intelligence to benefit humanity. (His latest suit was in August,........

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