Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI has raised $6 billion (roughly Rs. 49,857 crore) to accelerate its challenge to its former allies in OpenAI.
The Series B round, announced in a blog post on May 26, comes less than a year after xAI’s debut and marks one of the largest investments in the emerging field of AI tool development. Musk was an early proponent of artificial intelligence, backing OpenAI before introducing ChatGPT in late 2022.
He later withdrew his support for the venture and advocated caution due to the potential dangers of the technology. He was among a large group of industry leaders who last year called for a pause in the development of artificial intelligence.
In November, Musk launched a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, called Grok, which was trained and integrated into X.com, the social network formerly known as Twitter. It was the most visible product of xAI’s work so far, which is led by executives with previous experience at Alphabet’s DeepMind, Microsoft and Tesla.
The company intends to use the funds to bring its first products to market, build advanced infrastructure and accelerate the development of future technologies, the blog said.
Its pre-money valuation was $18 billion (roughly Rs. 1,49,571 crore), Musk said in a post on X. Marquee venture capital names including Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz backed the fundraising, which is one of the largest ever in industry.
Microsoft has invested about $13 billion (roughly Rs. 1,08,024 crore) in OpenAI, while Amazon.com has invested about $4 billion (roughly Rs. 33,238 crore) in Anthropic.
© 2024 Bloomberg LP
