- Techcrunch report added
- Statement from Elon Musk added
- Financial Times report added
- Funding is now official
Update from May 27, 2024:
It's official: xAI, Elon Musk's AI startup, has raised six billion dollars in a Series B funding round. The company announced the news on its blog.
Investors include Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding.
The funds will be used to launch initial products, build advanced infrastructure and accelerate research and development.
According to xAI, its primary focus is to develop "advanced AI systems that are truthful, competent, and maximally beneficial for all of humanity." Musk said in early April that xAI will release a GPT-4 competitor, Grok 2.0, this week ("in May").
By the fall of 2025, xAI reportedly aims to build an AI supercomputer that significantly outperforms current clusters, dubbed the "Gigafactory of Compute".
Updated April 28, 2024:
AI startup xAI, founded by Elon Musk, is on the verge of closing a $6 billion funding round at a pre-money valuation of $18 billion. According to a trusted source familiar with the deal, the round is expected to close in the upcoming weeks, Techcrunch reports.
Investors participating in the round include Sequoia Capital and Future Ventures, the venture capital fund run by Musk's longtime friend Steve Jurvetson. Other participants are said to be Valor Equity Partners and Gigafund, whose founders are part of Musk's inner circle. Social media platform X will also benefit, as it holds a stake in the AI company.
XAI hopes to score points with its ability to connect the digital and physical worlds by obtaining training data from Musk's companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Company and Neuralink. The Tesla fleet and the Optimus robot could benefit.
Updated on January 27, 2024:
Elon Musk says X is not looking for investors and he has "not talked to anyone" about investing in xAI.
Updated on January 26, 2024:
According to the Financial Times, xAI is in talks to raise up to six billion US dollars from global investors, including family offices in Hong Kong. The aim is to compete with Microsoft and OpenAI. Three FT sources familiar with the matter report that negotiations are underway.
Musk is aiming for a valuation of 20 billion US dollars and is also approaching sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East as well as investors in Japan and South Korea. Morgan Stanley is said to be coordinating the fundraising. The bank declined to comment.
OpenAI has received around 13 billion US dollars from Microsoft alone and is reportedly preparing a new mega-round. The second major LLM start-up, Anthropic, has received around six billion US dollars from Google and Amazon.
Original article from January 20, 2024:
Elon Musk's AI start-up xAI is said to have raised 500 million dollars
Elon Musk's AI startup xAI has secured 500 million dollars from investors to reach its funding target of one billion dollars, with a valuation of between 15 and 20 billion dollars being discussed, Bloomberg reports.
X's investors, including Larry Ellison, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity Management & Research Co. and Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, are expected to hold a 25 percent stake in xAI. According to Bloomberg sources, this means that xAI will allow its shareholders in X to invest at least 25 percent of the amount they have invested in X in xAI.
Some parties are considering the purchase of computing power in addition to or instead of xAI shares. It is expected that the final terms will be worked out in the coming weeks.
Musk says on X: "This is fake news from Bloomberg", without saying what is wrong with it.
