xAI, Elon Musk’s Artificial Intelligence Company, Seeks $1 Billion in Funding
According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence project, xAI, has revealed its plans to raise a substantial amount of funding, potentially reaching one billion dollars, as reported by Fox Business.
A filing by X.AI Corp. (dba xAI) on Tuesday outlined a plan to raise $1 billion in a stock offering, and more than $134 million has already been successfully raised. The document revealed that the company had entered into a binding agreement for the sale and purchase of the remaining $865 million.
Responding to a post from Deepwater Asset Management’s Gene Munster about the funding, Elon Musk clarified Wednesday, saying, “We’re not raising money right now.” Munster’s post suggested that Musk’s fundraising was aimed at competing with OpenAI and Anthropic.
According to a source cited by the New York Post, XAI is “raising money at a valuation that is likely to be between $4 billion and $10 billion,” adding that the disclosure is the first known fundraising round for Musk’s start-up.
According to Fox Business, this is the first publicly known fundraising round for Musk’s AI startup.
The filing follows Musk’s announcement a month ago that xAI’s “Grok” chatbot, designed to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, had entered beta testing.
Musk, who founded OpenAI in 2015 and stepped down from its board in 2018, launched xAI to compete with ChatGPT and other big players in the AI space. He has openly expressed concern about what he sees as censorship of AI initiatives by Big Tech companies, and has expressed his intention to develop a truth-seeking AI that seeks to understand the universe.
Since its inception in July, XAI has attracted talent from prominent AI research companies such as Google’s DeepMind unit and Microsoft.
Musk, also CEO of Tesla and owner of the X social media platform, clarified that XAI and the X social media platform are separate entities, although they work closely together. XAI is actively working with Tesla in addition to interacting with the X social media platform, Fox Business reported.
