Elon Musk’s synthetic intelligence startup xAI has raised $6 billion in a brand new spherical of funding, it introduced at present, in one of many largest offers within the red-hot nascent area because it raises capital to aggressively compete with rivals together with OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google.
Valor Fairness Companions, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Constancy, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding are amongst those that invested in xAI’s Sequence B funding, the startup stated in a weblog publish.
The funding confirms a TechCrunch report in April that xAI was trying to elevate $6 billion. On the time, xAI was closing in on a spherical that may have given it an $18 billion valuation, TechCrunch reported on the time. xAI, which emerged simply final 12 months and was spun off from social community X, didn’t disclose the way it was valued within the new spherical or whether or not X additionally invested.
Musk is without doubt one of the earliest and most well-known entrepreneurs within the area of synthetic intelligence. Tesla, the automobile firm he heads, is a number one producer of electrical autos with self-driving know-how. He’s additionally an early investor in OpenAI, a startup during which he invested tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars}. Since then, Musk’s love for OpenAI has waned: In March, he sued OpenAI and its co-founder Sam Altman for allegedly betraying their mission and changing into a “de facto closed-source subsidiary” of Microsoft.
After a 12 months of constructing xAI, Musk launched Grok 1.0, a ChatGPT chatbot competitor, in November. The corporate later made the mannequin obtainable by way of a chatbot to Premium+ customers — who pay $16 a month — on X. In April, the corporate launched a brand new mannequin, the Grok 1.5, and likewise allowed Premium customers on X to entry the chatbot.
In keeping with a weblog publish, xAI plans to make use of the funds from the brand new funding spherical to deliver its first set of merchandise to market, construct superior infrastructure, and speed up analysis and growth of future applied sciences.