Elon Musk-led xAI is ramping up its efforts to compete with rivals like OpenAI, Meta, and Google in the race to develop superintelligence. xAI has borrowed a page from Meta’s playbook to develop superintelligence. Like Mark Zuckerberg led Meta, brought in Scaler AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead the Superintelligence division. Similarly, xAI has just announced it’s bringing in Devendra Singh Chaplot to lead its AI superintelligence division.
What is superintelligence?
Superintelligence is a form of artificial intelligence that surpasses human intelligence in almost every field, including reasoning, creativity, problem-solving, and decision-making. The concept is widely discussed in the field of artificial intelligence. Unlike current AI systems that perform specific tasks, a superintelligent system could understand complex problems, learn rapidly, and improve itself. Researchers believe it could transform science, medicine, and technology, but it also raises serious ethical and safety concerns.
Who is Devendra Singh Chaplot?
Devendra Singh Chaplot is an Indian AI researcher and robotics expert who announced that he is joining SpaceX and xAI to team to build superintelligence. He said he will work directly under Elon Musk.
I'm joining SpaceX and xAI, working closely with Elon and team to build superintelligence.
— Devendra Chaplot (@dchaplot) March 13, 2026
Together SpaceX and xAI combine physical and digital intelligence under a leader who understands hardware at the deepest level. Add a high-agency culture with frontier-scale resources, and… pic.twitter.com/tjaPUjGUwK
In a now viral ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) post, Devendra Singh Chaplot wrote, “I’m joining SpaceX and xAI, working closely with Elon and team to build superintelligence.”
He also added, “Together, SpaceX and xAI combine physical and digital intelligence under a leader who understands hardware at the deepest level. Add a high-agency culture with frontier-scale resources, and you get the possibility to achieve something truly unique.”
The techie shared that he was excited to advance the fields.
“I’ve obsessed over it for years, from robotics research to building AI models on the founding teams of Mistral and TML,” Chaplot wrote in his post. “Both were extraordinary journeys with extraordinary people that shaped how I think about building intelligence from the ground up.”
Expressing gratitude, Chaplot said, “Grateful for everything that brought me here, and I can’t wait to get started.”
What is his professional background?
According to his LinkedIn bio, he has previously worked as a research scientist at the Facebook AI Research (FAIR) Lab, working at the intersection of machine learning, computer vision, and Robotics.
He has led the design of several AI systems, which won the CVPR-2019 PointNav and CVPR-2020 ObjectNav, the NeurIPS-2022 Rearrangement Habitat Challenges, and the Visual-Doom AI Competition 2017.
He is a recipient of the Facebook Fellowship Award, and his research has received Best Paper and Best Demo awards at leading AI conferences.
He has also worked at Samsung Electronics HQ in South Korea for about a year.
His research has also been featured in several popular media outlets such as MIT Technology Review, TechCrunch, Engadget, Popular Science, Kotaku, and Daily Mail.