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Elon Musk’s xAI Achieves $24 Billion Valuation in Just 11 Months Following a $6 Billion Funding Surge
- Elon Musk, a controversial yet prolific name in many circles, has officially thrown his hat into the AI ring with his company, xAI.
- xAI recently completed an extremely successful Series B funding round, raking in US$6b from investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity.
- The company’s primary goal is to create an alternative to the current language-learning models that prioritises “truth”.
If you ran a straw poll – who’s more controversial, Donald Trump or Elon Musk? – there’s a real chance that the votes might be split. But with great controversy comes great responsibility…or something like that.
Musk has his fingers in many pies, and is a major figurehead in several sub-sectors of the tech industry. Everyone knows about his involvement in meme coins, but with artificial intelligence the talk of the town, Musk is adding another string to his bow.
Related: Nvidia Smashes Earnings Estimates, Fuels AI Boom and Altcoin Run
xAI to Take On OpenAI, Bard With Chatbot “Grok”
xAI is Musk’s latest venture, an artificial intelligence firm with plans to develop current AI tech which Musk and co believe has tracked off course. And the company is off to a red-hot start, with a Series B funding round securing a whopping US$6b (AU$9.01b) from investors.
The list of involved parties is a who’s who of venture capitalists, including Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity Management and Valor Equity Partners.
The successful funding round catapulted xAI’s internal company valuation to $24b (AU$36.05b), less than a year after being founded.
xAI has grandiose plans for the proceeds. In a company statement, leaders spoke to their goals going forward:
xAI is primarily focused on the development of advanced AI systems that are truthful, competent and maximally beneficial for all of humanity. The company’s mission is to understand the true nature of the universe
xAI Lingo aside, this basically means xAI wants to compete with heavyweights OpenAI, Google and Microsoft to become the kings of generative AI. The funds will be used for the development of initial products and further research into building their AI models.
xAI’s first model, Grok, is a chatbot available to paid subscribers of X.
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Author
Ben Knight
Ben Knight is a writer and editor from Melbourne with a passion for all things music and finance. He enjoys turning complex topics – especially the technical details of cryptocurrency – into digestible bites that anybody can understand. He acquired his Master’s in Writing, Editing and Publishing from RMIT in 2019 and has run his own creative writing business ever since.
