Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has acquired Hotshot, a startup specializing in AI-powered video generation, similar to OpenAI’s Sora.

Official Announcement

Hotshot’s CEO and co-founder, Aakash Sastry, announced the news on March 17, 2025, via a post on X (formerly Twitter). He shared that over the past two years, Hotshot developed three video foundation models—Hotshot-XL, Hotshot Act One, and Hotshot—and now looks forward to scaling these efforts under xAI using the Colossus supercomputer.

Some news - We're excited to announce that @HotshotSupport has been acquired by @xAI ??

Over the past 2 years we've built 3 video foundation models as a small team - Hotshot-XL, Hotshot Act One, and Hotshot.

Training these models has given us a look into how global education,… pic.twitter.com/W4rmYUxnMR

— Aakash (@aakashsastry) March 17, 2025

About Hotshot

Hotshot, based in San Francisco, was founded by Sastry and John Mullan. Initially, the startup focused on AI-powered photo editing but later pivoted to text-to-video AI models. The company had attracted investments from Lachy Groom, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, and SV Angel, though it never disclosed funding details.

xAI’s Future Plans

xAI’s acquisition suggests it may be developing its own AI video generation models to compete with OpenAI’s Sora, Google’s Veo 2, and others. Musk had previously hinted at a "Grok Video" model, which is expected to launch in the coming months.

Hotshot's Service Shutdown

Hotshot has already stopped accepting new video creations as of March 14, and existing customers can download their videos until March 30.

Will the Hotshot Team Join xAI?

It’s unclear if the Hotshot team will join xAI, as Sastry declined to comment on the matter.