• by Colin Kirkland , Yesterday

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI has ditched its official status as a public benefit corporation (PBC).

Moving forward, the company will no longer be responsible for the same societal and environmental obligations, according to a report by CNBC.

In 2023, Musk started xAI and incorporated it as a PBC in the state of Nevada, ultimately committing the startup to impact society in a positive way while regularly reporting its relevant progress on the matter.

However, in May of last year, while Musk was involved in a lawsuit with OpenAI -- a company the billionaire entrepreneur had co-run -- xAI quietly repealed its PBC status, according to records filed with Nevada's secretary of state.

“Musk's retreat from PBC status has been so secretive that even his attorney appeared to be unaware of the change,” CNBC stated in its report.

A year later, it appears that xAI acted as if it still retained the status, with Musk's lawyer Marc Toberoff describing xAI this past May as “a public benefit corporation founded by Musk to help accelerate scientific research via AI.”

As a PBC, xAI failed to deliver annual reports on its environmental and social impacts in Nevada, and without its PBC designation, xAI has changed its environmental approach.

“A month after shedding its PBC designation, xAI began using dozens of natural gas turbines to power its data center in Memphis, Tennessee, where the company trains and processes the data behind its Grok chatbot,” CNBC adds. “While xAI, and its supplier, Solaris Energy Infrastructure, initially promised to use pollution controls with the turbines, those haven't yet materialized.”

Musk's company -- which now owns X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter -- is currently being sued by the NAACP for allegedly violating the Clean Air Act.