Elon Musk said on 3 August that he considers Tesla "the largest A.I. project on Earth" and that his artificial-intelligence startup xAI is attracting senior engineers from Meta Platforms without offering them upfront compensation. Musk did not disclose how many Meta staff have joined or the terms of their deferred pay, but he framed the moves as evidence that xAI’s mission and resources are drawing top industry talent. xAI, launched in 2023, is developing large-language-model products intended to compete with offerings from OpenAI, Google and Meta.