Elon Musk: xAI will achieve AGI as early as 2026, and the company will overcome competitors in the next two to three years

Elon Musk seems quite optimistic about the future prospects of his artificial intelligence company xAI.

According to media reports citing several informed sources, during an all-hands meeting held last week at xAI's San Francisco headquarters, Musk told employees that as long as the company can survive the next two to three years, xAI will surpass its competitors.

Musk stated that in the race towards "superintelligence" (i.e., surpassing human intelligence), rapidly expanding computing power and data capabilities will be key factors, and this is expected to make xAI the most powerful AI company. xAI has the potential to achieve Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) in the coming years, reaching or exceeding human intelligence, possibly as early as 2026.

Musk mentioned earlier this November that the probability of xAI's Grok 5 model achieving AGI is about 10%, and this model is scheduled for release early next year.

Musk also told employees that a significant advantage of xAI compared to other AI companies is its ability to secure approximately $20 billion to $30 billion in funding each year, and it can benefit from synergies with his other companies. Informed sources noted that Tesla had integrated Grok into its vehicles earlier this year.

Overall, employees reported that Musk is satisfied with the company's progress. One insider described the meeting as "fast-paced and uplifting."

Additionally, Musk envisioned building data centers in space and discussed his Mars colonization plans during the meeting. Informed sources said he indicated that Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus could potentially be responsible for the operation and maintenance of these extraterrestrial data centers in the future.

Musk had previously stated that Optimus could support SpaceX's missions as early as next year. Google CEO Sundar Pichai and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have also publicly discussed the possibility of building data centers in space, although Pichai acknowledged that this is a "moonshot-level" bold idea.

Over the past year, xAI has rapidly expanded its data center footprint, a project named "Colossus." Earlier this year, the company stated it had approximately 200,000 GPUs, while Musk mentioned plans to scale this up to 1 million GPUs.

xAI is one of many companies vying for Artificial General Intelligence and attempting to support valuations in the hundreds of billions. Despite Musk's significant personal influence, xAI remains a relatively new player in a competition dominated by giants like OpenAI and Google.

The AI race shows no signs of slowing down. Reports indicate that earlier this month, OpenAI even entered "emergency mode" to accelerate the launch of its latest model. Google released its new Gemini model in November, while xAI also rolled out a new version of Grok in a short period.

During this all-hands meeting, xAI's head also demonstrated updates to several existing products, including Grok Voice, an application for Tesla owners, and intelligent agents. Informed sources noted that these updates included enhancements in Grok's predictive capabilities, stronger voice listening features, and video editing capabilities