Neuralink labeled itself in April as a “small disadvantaged business” in a federal filing with the U.S. Small Business Administration.

One of the weirder bits of news on the AI-front has been Elon Musk's rollout of sexually-charged animated chat bots. Officially called "companions," and unofficially "waifus," a Japanese term for romantic-partner or wife,

xAI’s latest frontier model, Grok 4, has been released without industry-standard safety reports, despite the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, being notably vocal about his concerns regarding AI safety. Leading AI labs typically release safety reports known as “system cards” alongside frontier models.

AI explained why Grok 4 seemed to search for Elon Musk's opinions when asked about some hot-button topics.

In a familiar critique of corporate structures, Musk also weighed in on the ideal environment for fostering such long-term, existentially focused AI. He declared, “For long-term optimization, it is better to be a private than a public company, as the latter is punished for long-term optimization beyond the reward cycle of stock portfolio managers.”

SpaceX has agreed to invest $2 billion in Elon Musk 's artificial intelligence company xAI. The investment makes up nearly half of the company's recent $5 billion equity round, according to investors cited by The Wall Street Journal.

One of the new “companions,” or AI characters for users to interact with, is a sexualized blonde anime bot called “Ani."