Elon Musk says SpaceX will reach “pole position” in AI within about six months if its current pace of development continues, pushing back against a critic who claimed the company had already fallen behind in the AI race.
The exchange took place Thursday morning after Musk said he was “cautiously optimistic” that SpaceX will have a “Fable/GPT-6 level model” within 2 to 3 months. A user named Alex responded that “it’s over for SpaceXAI,” predicting Anthropic and OpenAI would have something more advanced by then.
Musk responded in three parts, first arguing that SpaceX’s AI effort is only three years old, compared with six years for Anthropic and ten years for OpenAI, and saying that if its “second derivative” of progress remains strong, the company could lead the field in about half a year.
His second point questioned the need for increasingly capable models in every situation. Musk argued that once intelligence exceeds what a task requires, additional capability does not provide much benefit, and wrote, “You don’t need (and it would be cruel to put) Newton-level intelligence in your toaster!”
The third part of his response focused on hardware, which Musk described as the main limitation. He called it “incredibly difficult” to bring large amounts of computing power online quickly, while saying SpaceX has demonstrated exceptional ability in that area and will continue improving. The claim aligns with a company that has been folding xAI into its rocket operation and promoting orbital data centers as a future source of computing capacity.
SpaceXAI has been releasing AI products aggressively this month, adding voice to its Grok Bot workplace agent and claiming the bot can resolve support tickets for as little as $0.20 each.
Musk’s 2-to-3-month timeline will serve as the first checkpoint. If a Fable or GPT-6 class model launches within that timeframe, the six-month pole-position claim will face its first major test.
