xAI acquires HotShot to enhance video generation capabilities
Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, has acquired HotShot, a startup known for its video generation tools powered by artificial intelligence. This acquisition aims to boost xAI's presence in the competitive generative AI market. HotShot's technology will be integrated into xAI's Grok chatbot platform. HotShot, based in New York, announced that it will stop creating new videos by March 2025. The startup had previously focused on AI photo editing before shifting to text-to-video AI models. HotShot's CEO, Aakash Sastry, expressed excitement about joining xAI and scaling their projects on a large scale. Founded in 2017, HotShot has created several advanced video models, including HotShot-XL. These models can generate short, high-quality videos from text prompts. The company has received support from well-known investors, such as Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Following the acquisition, existing HotShot users will still be able to download their content until March 30, 2025. xAI plans to enhance its Grok platform further, with Musk suggesting a new "Grok Video" model may be on the way.