# Other activities of Elon Musk

* This article is part of a series aboutElon Musk
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Zip2
X.com
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SpaceX
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criticism
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In popular culture
Elon Musk (Isaacson)
Elon Musk (Vance)
Ludicrous
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"Members Only"
"The Platonic Permutation"
"The Musk Who Fell to Earth"
"One Crew over the Crewcoo's Morty"
Elon Musk's Crash Course
Related
Tesla Roadster in space
TSLAQ
Twitter Files
2022 Twitter suspensions
Tesla and unions
List of Tesla Autopilot crashes :
vte :
Businessman and Elon Musk has been involved in a number of foundations and companies alongside his business ventures. He is president of the Musk Foundation, co-founded the artificial intelligence (AI) research company OpenAI, and later launched another AI company called xAI.
In August 2013, Musk assigned engineers from SpaceX and Tesla to design a mode of transport between Greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, at an estimated cost of $6 billion. He dubbed the concept Hyperloop, but the project was discontinued in 2022. In December 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI, a not-for-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research company. He pledged $1 billion of funding to the company, and as of 2023, he has donated approximately $50 million. In 2018, Musk left the OpenAI board, and in July 2023, launched the artificial intelligence company xAI, which aims to develop a generative AI program that competes with existing offerings like ChatGPT. The company hired engineers from Google and OpenAI. and Musk obtained funding from investors in SpaceX and Tesla.

## Hyperloop

In August 2013, Musk announced plans for a version of a vactrain and assigned a dozen engineers from SpaceX and Tesla to establish the conceptual foundations and create initial designs. Later that year, Musk unveiled the concept, which he dubbed the Hyperloop. The alpha design for the system was published in a white paper posted to the Tesla and SpaceX blogs. The document scoped out the technology and outlined a notional route where such a transport system could be built between Greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, at an estimated cost of $6 billion. The proposal, if technologically feasible at the costs cited, would make Hyperloop travel cheaper than any other mode of transport for such long distances. Biographer Ashlee Vance noted that Musk hoped Hyperloop would "make the public and legislators rethink the high-speed train" proposal current in California at the time and consider more "creative" ideas.
In 2015, Musk announced a design competition for students and others to build Hyperloop pods, to operate on a SpaceX-sponsored mile-long track, for a 2015–2017 Hyperloop pod competition. The track was used in January 2017, and Musk also announced that the company had started a tunnel project, with Hawthorne Municipal Airport as its destination. In July 2017, Musk said that he had received "verbal government approval" to build a Hyperloop from New York City to Washington, D.C., with stops in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Mention of the projected DC-to-Baltimore leg was removed from the Boring Company website in 2021. The tunnel project to Hawthorne was discontinued in 2022 and is planned to be converted into parking spots for SpaceX workers.
Mobility experts have criticized the Hyperloop concept for potential safety issues, planning complexity, low passenger capacity, and extremely high costs. Jose Gomez-Ibanez, a professor of urban planning and public policy at Harvard, said, "It gives me pause to think that otherwise intelligent people are buying into this kind of utopian vision."

## OpenAI and xAI

In December 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI, a not-for-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research company aiming to develop artificial general intelligence intended to be safe and beneficial to humanity. A particular focus of the company was to democratize artificial superintelligence systems against governments and corporations. Musk pledged $1 billion of funding to OpenAI. In 2023, Musk said he had given a total of $100 million to OpenAI. TechCrunch later reported that, according to its investigation of public records, "only $15 million" of OpenAI's funding could be definitively traced to Musk. Musk subsequently stated that he had donated about $50 million.
In 2018, Musk left the OpenAI board to avoid possible future conflicts with his role as CEO of Tesla, as Tesla increasingly became involved in AI through Tesla Autopilot. Since then, OpenAI has made significant advances in machine learning, producing neural networks such as ChatGPT (producing human-like text) and DALL-E (generating digital images from natural language descriptions).
On July 12, 2023, Elon Musk launched an artificial intelligence company called xAI, which aims to develop a generative AI program that competes with existing offerings like ChatGPT. The company hired engineers from Google and OpenAI. Musk obtained funding from investors in SpaceX and Tesla.
In February 2024 Musk sued OpenAI, its chief executive Sam Altman, and president Greg Brockman over the company violating its founding agreement by prioritizing profits over benefits to humanity.

## Company towns

After 2020, thousands of acres of land just outside Austin, Texas, were acquired by Musk and his companies with a total value of $2.5 billion. The project to build the company town named Snailbrook in Bastrop County, Texas began in 2021 according to reports by The Wall Street Journal. Musk's then-girlfriend Grimes and Kanye West were involved in the planning. The name "Snailbrook" alludes to the Boring Company's stated goal of building a machine that can bore tunnels faster than a snail can move. In 2023 the town had a reported population of 12 people. There are plans to establish a school and a university there.