Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has announced the acquisition of HotShot, a New York-based startup specialising in AI-powered video generation tools. The move signals xAI’s ambition to strengthen its position in the generative AI space and compete with platforms like OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Veo 2.
Read what HotShot’s CEO said about the acquisition
HotShot’s CEO and co-founder, Aakash Sastry, shared the news on X (formerly known as Twitter), stating, “Over the past 2 years we’ve built 3 video foundation models as a small team—HotShot-XL, HotShot Act One, and HotShot. Training these models has given us a look into how global education, entertainment, communication, and productivity are about to change in the coming years. We’re excited to continue scaling these efforts on the largest cluster in the world, Colossus, as a part of xAI.”
Founded in 2017, HotShot initially focused on AI-powered photo editing before pivoting to text-to-video AI models. The company’s foundation models, including HotShot-XL, have been trained on extensive datasets, enabling users to create short, high-quality videos from text prompts. HotShot’s technology has attracted investments from prominent venture capitalists, including Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and Lachy Groom.
As part of the acquisition, HotShot will discontinue new video creation starting March 14, 2025, but existing users can download their content until March 30. The integration of HotShot’s technology into xAI is expected to enhance xAI’s Grok chatbot platform, with Musk hinting at the development of a “Grok Video” model in the coming months.
