Elon Musk-backed artificial intelligence (AI) firm xAI has secured a major funding round of $6 billion, valuing the company at $35 billion to $40 billion. The influx of capital will be used to enhance its infrastructure and accelerate research and development efforts.
The investment comes as xAI competes with rival companies like OpenAI, which was co-founded by Musk but later led out of the organization due to disagreements. Musk has continued to invest in AI, previously building what he claimed would be the world’s largest supercomputer in Memphis for his chatbot platform Grok.
Grok, powered by a custom-built supercomputer, is available to subscribers on X and utilizes data from the platform for training its AI algorithms. Several prominent investors have supported xAI, including venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and Saudi Arabian prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s investment company Kingdom Holding.
The funding round puts xAI among the top players in the rapidly growing AI industry, which has seen a surge in new companies and products in recent years. Musk aims to use his expertise to build more advanced and safe AI systems, believing that he can mitigate potential risks associated with the technology.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/24/technology/elon-musk-xai-funding.html