Tech Explained: Elon Musk wants AI agents to run his companies, says need to move faster to become leader in Simple Terms

Elon Musk has made it clear that he believes the artificial intelligence race will not be won by the biggest company, but by the fastest one. In the latest company-wide meeting at xAI, the billionaire entrepreneur spoke openly about restructuring the startup, accelerating development and building AI systems that could eventually take charge of running businesses.

The meeting, which Musk later shared publicly on X, came shortly after two of xAI’s co-founders — Jimmy Ba and Tony Wu — exited the company. Their departure adds to a series of exits from the original founding team that launched xAI in 2023. Over the past two years, several early members have stepped away, including Kyle Kosic, Igor Babuschkin and Christian Szegedy. Greg Yang also recently reduced his role after a health diagnosis. While acknowledging the changes, Musk thanked those who left and shifted the focus toward what lies ahead.

Elon Musk to xAI staff: Need AI agents to run companies

At the centre of that future is a sharper organisational structure. Musk said xAI will now operate through four main verticals. The first revolves around Grok, the company’s chatbot and voice platform. The second focuses on coding tools. The third is Imagine, its video-generation product. The fourth is a new division called Macrohard. This unit is being designed to create AI agents capable of managing companies.

Musk told his employees that speed is everything. “What matters is velocity and acceleration,” he said. “If you are moving faster, you will be the leader.” The statement suggests how urgently xAI views the competitive landscape, especially as rivals push ahead with increasingly advanced AI models.

Macrohard, led by founding member Toby Pohlen, represents Musk’s long-term bet on AI agents that go beyond chat interfaces. Instead of simply answering questions or generating content, these systems would act autonomously, potentially overseeing workflows, decision-making and operations inside organisations. It suggests Musk’s belief that AI will move from being a tool to becoming an active operator within companies, including his own.

Meanwhile, Aman Madaan, who joined xAI last year, is heading the Grok chatbot and voice division. During the meeting, he suggested how quickly the team has built its voice capabilities in response to market momentum. “We had nothing, but in six months we developed it from scratch,” he said, pointing to the rapid pace of development inside the company.

Other divisions have also been assigned leadership roles. Manuel Kroiss will oversee coding initiatives, while Guodong Zhang will manage the Imagine video product along with supporting programming efforts. Musk has made it clear that real-time video understanding and generation will play a major role in the next wave of AI development. “Most of the AI computing is gonna be understanding real-time video generation,” he said. “And we expect to be leaders in that.”

Elon Musk wants to build a factory on Moon to win AI race

The restructuring also comes on the heels of a major strategic move, the merger of xAI with SpaceX. The combined entity has reportedly been valued at $1.25 trillion. For xAI, which has been investing heavily in data centres, advanced chips and talent acquisition, the merger could help ease financial pressure. Building frontier AI models requires enormous computational resources, and Musk has repeatedly stressed the importance of securing more power.

In fact, his ambitions extend beyond traditional infrastructure. During the same meeting, Musk floated an idea that sounded straight out of a science fiction novel. He asserted that he wants to buildi a factory on the moon to manufacture AI satellites. He suggested that a lunar facility could produce satellites designed to provide additional computing capacity for xAI. These would then be launched using a “mass driver,” essentially a giant catapult system in space.

“You have to go to the moon,” Musk said, framing the idea as a way to gain access to far greater computing power than competitors. “It’s difficult to imagine what an intelligence of that scale would think about, but it’s going to be incredibly exciting to see it happen.”

While no timeline or technical blueprint was shared, the comments suggest that Musk believes AI development will demand infrastructure on a much bigger scale, possibly even off-planet. The merger with SpaceX, which is reportedly preparing for an initial public offering, could align both companies toward that long-term vision of space-based computing. You can stay tuned to India Today Tech for all the AI-related updates.

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