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Elon Musk founded xAI last summer and today announced raising $6 billion in fundingstating that it will help bring the startup’s “first products to market, build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate research and development of future technologies.”
So far, xAI has released Grok, a supposedly bolder version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, available via X, formerly known as Twitter, where the chatbot is currently only available to X Premium subscribers.
Funding in this round came from multiple sources, according to xAI, including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Al Waleed bin Talal. Last year, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed that xAI intended to raise up to $1 billion in equity investments, and a few months ago, The financial times reported that he was looking until…. US$6 billion. Musk denied that report at the time.
Continuing the AI race for chips, talent and technology won’t be cheap – big tech companies have invested billions in AI startups like Anthropic, in addition to the resources that Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta are investing in AI projects own.
Outside of xAI and OpenAI, Musk has said he would “prefer to build products outside of Tesla” when it comes to AI and robotics unless he gains more control. Tesla shareholders will start voting this week on the possibility of restoring Musk’s $56 billion salary package before their annual meeting on June 13.
