Elon Musk’s AI firm, xAI, has acquired Hotshot, a startup engaged on AI-powered video technology instruments alongside the strains of OpenAI’s Sora.
Aakash Sastry, Hotshot’s CEO and co-founder, introduced the information in a publish on X on Monday.
“Over the previous 2 years we’ve constructed 3 video basis fashions as a small staff — Hotshot-XL, Hotshot Act One, and Hotshot,” Sastry wrote. “Coaching these fashions has given us a glance into how international training, leisure, communication, and productiveness are about to alter within the coming years. We’re excited to proceed scaling these efforts on the biggest cluster on this planet, Colossus, as part of xAI!”
Hotshot, which relies in San Francisco, was based a number of years in the past by Sastry and John Mullan. The startup initially centered on growing AI-powered photograph creation and modifying instruments, however ultimately pivoted in favor of text-to-video AI fashions.
Some information – We’re excited to announce that @HotshotSupport has been acquired by @xAI 🚀
Over the previous 2 years we’ve constructed 3 video basis fashions as a small staff – Hotshot-XL, Hotshot Act One, and Hotshot.
Coaching these fashions has given us a glance into how international training,… pic.twitter.com/W4rmYUxnMR
— Aakash (@aakashsastry) March 17, 2025
Hotshot managed to draw investments from VCs together with Lachy Groom, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, and SV Angel previous to its exit. The corporate by no means publicly disclosed the dimensions of its funding rounds.
xAI’s acquisition of Hotshot might point out that the previous plans to construct its personal video technology fashions to compete with the likes of Sora, Google’s Veo 2, and others. Musk has beforehand hinted that xAI is growing video-generating fashions so as to add to its Grok chatbot platform. Throughout a livestream in January, Musk stated that he expects a “Grok Video” mannequin to be launched “in a number of months.”
Hotshot stated on its web site that it started sunsetting new video creation on March 14. Present prospects could have till March 30 to obtain movies they’ve created utilizing the platform, the corporate added.
It wasn’t instantly clear whether or not your complete Hotshot employees can be becoming a member of xAI. Sastry declined to remark.