Grok to Learn to Create Videos: xAI Acquires AI Video Generator Developer Hotshot

Elon Musk’s xAI has acquired Hotshot, a startup that works on creating AI-powered tools for generating videos. Aakash Sastry, co-founder and CEO of Hotshot, announced the deal on his X social media account.

Image source: xAI

«Over the past two years, a small team of us have built three video generation models — Hotshot-XL, Hotshot Act One, and Hotshot. The process of training these models has helped us understand how global education, entertainment, communication, and productivity will change in the coming years. We are excited to continue scaling our efforts on the world’s largest Colossus cluster as part of xAI,” Sastry said in a statement.

Hotshot was founded several years ago in San Francisco. Initially, the startup was developing AI tools for generating and editing images, but over time, it refocused on AI models that can generate videos based on text prompts. Hotshot has previously attracted the attention of investors, but the amount of funds invested in the startup has never been publicly announced.

Hotshot’s takeover by xAI could help the startup build AI models for video generation that will compete with similar models like OpenAI’s Sora or Google’s Veo 2. Musk has previously hinted that xAI is working on video generation tools that could eventually be integrated with the Grok chatbot. Earlier this year, Musk said he expected a model called Grok Video to appear “in a few months.”