Elon Musk’s venture into artificial intelligence, xAI, has announced a successful series B funding round, raising a significant $6 billion. The funding came from prominent investors such as Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, and Kingdom Holding. This funding round has propelled xAI’s valuation to an impressive $24 billion, just 11 months after its launch in July 2023.
In comparison, OpenAI, the creator of chatGPT, currently holds a valuation of $80 billion, making it more than three times larger than Musk’s xAI. OpenAI has had a headstart, having been launched in December 2015, giving it an eight-year advantage over Musk’s AI company.
The funds raised by xAI will be utilized to further the research and development of their AI systems, which aim to benefit society. They also aim to bring their first product to market. Musk himself reached out to his 184 million followers, encouraging them to apply to his AI company.
xAI released its first AI chatbot, Grok-1, on the platform X in November. In April, they introduced Grok-1.5, which has image-understanding capabilities, allowing it to process various forms of visual information. A month earlier, in March, the network architecture of Grok-1 was made open-source.
Despite being in its early stages compared to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Musk believes that Grok has the potential to become a competitor by the end of this year. During his speech at Viva Tech Paris 2024, Musk expressed his ambitions for the advancement of AI.
It is worth noting that Musk has also voiced concerns about the development of AI. In March, he joined over 2,600 tech experts in calling for a pause on AI development due to the perceived risks it poses to society and humanity.
Overall, xAI’s successful funding round marks a significant milestone for the company as it continues to make strides in the field of artificial intelligence.