Elon Musk’s xAI is stepping up its game in the world of AI-driven video technology with its recent acquisition of Hotshot. If you haven’t heard of them, Hotshot is a startup that’s been making waves with its innovative AI video generation tools. They’ve developed some impressive models like Hotshot-XL, Hotshot Act One, and the original Hotshot. Aakash Sastry, Hotshot’s CEO and co-founder, broke the news on X, sharing how thrilled they are to scale their innovations using xAI’s massive infrastructure, aptly named Colossus.
Hotshot is based in San Francisco and was founded by Sastry and John Mullan. Initially, they were all about AI-powered photo creation and editing. But as the market evolved, they shifted gears to focus on text-to-video AI models. This pivot caught the attention of venture capitalists like Lachy Groom, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, and SV Angel. While the specifics of their funding were kept under wraps, it’s clear they’ve made quite an impression.
This move by xAI signals a strategic push into video generation, potentially setting them up to compete with big players like OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Veo 2. Musk has hinted at integrating these video-generating models into the Grok chatbot platform, with a “Grok Video” model expected to be unveiled soon.
As Hotshot transitions under the xAI umbrella, they’re winding down their existing video creation services. If you’re a current user, you’ve got until March 30 to retrieve your creations. As for the integration of Hotshot’s team into xAI, that’s still up in the air. Sastry hasn’t shared any details about staffing changes yet.
