Elon Musk’s xAI joins Seattle’s AI boom with new Seattle-area office plans

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company announced last week that xAI is expanding to the Puget Sound area with a new office building.

Musk’s company considered opening its new office east of Seattle, although the size of the space and property have not been mentioned, according to The Puget Sound Business Journal.

Elon Musk’s xAI to open office in Seattle

xAI listed three open positions available at the company’s future office, with salaries ranging from $180,000 to $440,000.

All three positions are for the company’s technical staff, with specialties including image and video generation.

xAI’s move from the Bay Area to Seattle followed other AI companies that have made similar moves to Seattle, including Amazon (Anthropic) and Microsoft (OpenAI).

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, currently has a substantial SpaceX workforce in the greater Seattle area, with 2,000 employees.

In 2024, AI job postings represented 4.8% of all open positions in Seattle and claimed 9.2% of all AI-related positions in the United States, according to The Puget Sound Business Journal.

AI job listings have now increased to 6.2% of the total available positions open in Seattle as of July.

Musk reclaims world’s richest person title

Musk became the world’s richest person for the first time four years ago.

In a stunning few minutes after markets opened Wednesday, stock in Larry Ellison’s company, Oracle Corp., rocketed up by more than a third, enough to temporarily wrest the title from its longtime holder, Elon Musk, and hand it to the software giant’s co-founder.

Ellison’s surge in wealth on Wednesday morning reflected investor expectations that computers will take over many jobs, currently operated by humans, and Oracle will benefit.

Oracle stock closed Wednesday at $328.33, a 36% jump. Tesla was up less than 1% at $347.79.

Musk regained his status as the world’s richest person by the end of the day, surpassing Ellison after he claimed the No. 1 spot for a brief period of time, according to The Associated Press.

The difference between Musk and Ellison currently stands at $1 billion, with Musk reportedly worth $384.2 billion versus Ellison’s $383.2 billion.

The brief switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle, powered by multibillion-dollar orders from customers as the artificial-intelligence race heats up.

Contributing: Bernard Condon; The Associated Press

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