Inside Elon Musk's artificial intelligence party at the former OpenAI headquarters.

The event, organized by Elon Musk at the original OpenAI headquarters in the Mission District of San Francisco, promised to be a typical recruitment experience for a tech startup, complete with free food and drinks, as well as real-time music generated by artificial intelligence. However, the atmosphere was marked by enhanced security, including metal detectors, ID checks, and a constant presence of guards.

Musk, who co-founded OpenAI before leaving the organization due to leadership conflicts, was there to scout talent for his new company, xAI. Curiously, on the same day, OpenAI was holding its Dev Day, where its CEO, Sam Altman, had given a presentation to a crowd of developers. Around this event, rumors swirled in Silicon Valley about a multi-billion dollar funding round that could surpass the funds Musk had recently raised for xAI.

At one point, Musk stood on a table to address those present. In his speech, he expressed his ambition to develop a "digital superintelligence as benign as possible" and issued an invitation to engineers to join xAI to build useful intelligence and related applications. Over the course of an hour and a half, he interacted with most of the attendees, sharing his vision for general artificial intelligence and his desire to rapidly advance the development of xAI, which he hopes will be as influential in its field as SpaceX is in the aerospace industry.

The day culminated when the event was interrupted by the fire service. Musk was accompanied by his security team as he left the venue, while attendees, some of whom were carrying OpenAI backpacks, dispersed with slices of pizza.

Since its founding in March 2023, xAI has grown rapidly, expanding to new offices in Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto. Musk has recruited a prominent team, including researchers from Google DeepMind and OpenAI, with the goal of launching a competitive language model in a short time. Recently, xAI secured $6 billion in funding, valuing the company at $24 billion.

However, xAI has faced some challenges in its development, relying on external technologies for certain functions of its chatbot Grok, which was launched as part of a subscription on X. Although it has made several updates, the company is under pressure to quickly produce effective solutions.

Musk, despite being the richest person in the world, does not face financial issues, but his true ambition is to dethrone OpenAI. Although he co-founded OpenAI in 2015, he left the board three years later citing conflicts of interest. In recent months, competition has intensified, especially after a funding round that left OpenAI in a superior position compared to xAI.

Despite the challenges of securing talent and funding in the competitive tech landscape of Silicon Valley, Musk continues to attract engineers, many of whom felt inspired by his vision of artificial intelligence. For those considering joining xAI, the opportunity to work in an agile environment and take risks could be a significant draw compared to the more conservative structures of tech giants like OpenAI and Google.

Musk emphasized his goal of advancing towards an artificial intelligence not controlled by corporations, proposing that the development of a "top-level AI" is key to his vision for the future.