Elon Musk’s xAI has raised $6B in new funding to advance AI goals

xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, has he was promoted $6 billion, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.

Investors contributed at least $77,593, per booking (97 participated, but the document does not disclose their details). xAI then he announced (confirming some earlier reports) that Andreessen Horowitz , Blackrock, Fidelity, Kingdom Holdings, Lightspeed, MGX, Morgan Stanley, OIA, QIA, Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Nvidia, AMD, and others were counted among them.

The new funding brings xAI’s total to $12 billion, and adds $6 billion to tranche xAI. he was promoted this spring. Price CNBC report in November that xAI was aiming for a $50 billion valuation — double its valuation six months ago.

According to per the Financial Times, only investors who backed xAI in its previous fundraising round were allowed to participate in this one. He says, that money he helped Money Musk’s Twitter access was given opportunity up to 25% of xAI shares.

Adding AI

Musk created xAI last year. Soon after, the company was released Groka popular AI model that now has a lot of power on X, including an available chatbot X Premium subscribers are users for free in some areas.

Grok has what Musk described as a “rebellious streak” — a willingness to answer “tasteful questions that are rejected by many other AI systems.” Told to be insulting, for example, Grok will happily oblige, speaking profanities and beautiful language that you will not understand. ChatGPT.

Musk is to be mocked ChatGPT and other AI systems to be “woke” and “politically correct,” even Grok reluctance to cross certain boundaries and hedge on political matters. He is also referred to as Grok as a “truth seeker” and less biased than the competing species, although there are testimony to say that Grok leans to the left.

Over the past year, Grok has been active in X, the social networking site formerly known as Twitter. At launch, Grok was only access to X users – and developers who are skilled enough to access it “Open source” version I’m walking.

Thank you for including with the open source Flux generator, Grok can generate images on X (without protection, arguments). This model can also analyze images, and summarize the stories and events that are taking place (imperfectlylife).

Reports suggest that Grok may run more X functions in the future, from addition X searches are account bios support post analytics and custom solutions.

xAI is racing to catch up with formidable competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic in the AI ​​race. The company he started API in October, allowing customers to build Grok into third-party apps, platforms, and services. And it just started a Grok iOS version app for test takers.

Musk says it wasn’t a fair fight.

In a a case filed against OpenAI by Microsoft, OpenAI’s closest partner, Musk’s lawyers accuse OpenAI of “trying to eliminate competitors” such as xAI by “making promises to investors. not to earn them money.” OpenAI, Musk’s counsel says, also unfairly benefits from Microsoft’s infrastructure and technology in what lawyers describe as a “de facto merger.”

However, Musk has often said that X’s features give xAI a leg up compared to its rivals. Last month, X has been changed its privacy policy allows third parties, including xAI, to train people on X images.

It is worth noting, Musk, was one of the founders of OpenAI, and left the company in 2018 after disagreements over its approach. He has argued in previous suits that OpenAI benefited from early participation but abandoned its promise to make the fruits of its AI research available to all.

It’s the xAI ecosystem

xAI has outlined a vision in terms of how its models can be trained on data from Musk’s various companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, and its models could revolutionize technology in both companies. It is providing customer support for SpaceX’s Starlink network, according to The Wall Street Journal, and the startup is he said to negotiate with Tesla to provide R&D in exchange for some of the automaker’s money.

Tesla shareholders, for one, oppose these plans. Many sued Musk on his decision to launch xAI, he argues that Musk is they diverted talent and wealth from Tesla to its competitors.

However, marketing – by xAI developers and consumer-facing products – has brought xAI revenue to around $100 million per year. For example, Anthropic is he says on pace to generate $1 billion in revenue this year, and OpenAI is targeting $4 billion by the end of 2024.

Musk said this summer that xAI is training the next generation of Grok models at its Memphis data center, which was apparently built in just 122 days and is currently powered by portable diesel generators. The company hopes to upgrade the server farm, which has 100,000 Nvidia GPUs, next year; in its press release, xAI said it plans to double that number. (Because of their ability to compute large amounts of data in parallel, GPUs are our favorite chips for training and running models.)

In November, xAI won acceptance from the regional authority in Memphis for 150MW of renewable energy – enough to power about 100,000 homes. To win the commission, xAI pledged to improve the city’s drinking water supply and supply the Memphis grid with low-cost Tesla batteries. But some people criticized this, saying that it will confuse the group as well worse local air.

Tesla too waiting to use the advanced data center to improve its driving technology.

xAI has grown significantly from its workforce in the year since its inception, growing from just twelve employees in March 2023 to at 100 today. In October, the beginning to be moved in the former OpenAI offices in San Francisco’s Mission.

xAI has reportedly told investors it plans to raise more capital next year.

It won’t just be the AI ​​lab that brings in the big bucks. Anthropic in the near future raised $4 billion from Amazon, bringing its total revenue to $13.7 billion, while OpenAI he was promoted $ 6.6 billion in October to increase its war chest to $ 17.9 billion.

Megadeals like OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s drove major AI projects to $31.1 billion across 2,000 deals in Q3 2024, on More about PitchBook.

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