xAI Holds Talks with Mistral and Cursor on Potential Three-Way AI Partnership

XAI, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup, has held discussions in recent weeks with French AI company Mistral and AI coding startup Cursor about a potential three-way partnership, people familiar with the matter told Business Insider. Musk floated the idea of closer AI collaboration with Mistral and Cursor to take on rivals like Anthropic, insiders said to Business Insider.

These talks reflect xAI's efforts to strengthen its position in the competitive AI landscape.

A cofounder of Mistral joined xAI last month after a stint at Thinking Machines Lab, Business Insider reported. This move precedes the partnership discussions and highlights personnel shifts in the AI sector. xAI launched its Grok chatbot in 2023, marking its entry into AI model development.

The company has rapidly established one of the largest data center footprints in the AI race, supporting its infrastructure scaling and model performance improvements. Musk has made several changes to xAI's leadership ranks over the past few months, according to Business Insider.

Since late last year, he has repeatedly expressed concerns to engineers about Anthropic's lead in the AI race, people familiar with the matter said.

Musk helped found OpenAI in 2015. He is in the process of suing OpenAI, accusing the company of straying from its original nonprofit mission.