Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI is on the verge of closing a funding round that would value the company at $18 billion, according to Bloomberg. This funding could help boost Musk’s project as it competes with rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic, and fends off competition from tech giants like Meta, Microsoft, and Google.
Musk’s X.AI Corp. could finalize the funding round as early as this week, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Details such as the timing, valuation, and size of the round are still being worked out.
Previous reports indicated that Musk’s AI startup is looking to raise $6 billion at a valuation of around $18 billion, up from initial estimates of a $3 billion deal at a $15 billion pre-money valuation. This increase is due to high investor interest in the project.
Investors in the round reportedly include venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, known for backing Musk’s previous projects like SpaceX, The Boring Company, and the Twitter takeover attempt in 2022. They are likely attracted to Musk’s track record at Tesla and SpaceX, as well as the potential of X’s social media platform to train large language models.
Musk announced xAI about a year ago with the goal of rivaling industry leaders like Google’s DeepMind and OpenAI. Musk had previously been involved with OpenAI but left due to conflicts of interest and disagreements over AI safety. xAI recently unveiled the chatbot Grok, aiming to compete with products from other AI leaders like Meta, Anthropic, and Google.
As one of the wealthiest individuals in the world, with an estimated net worth of $194.7 billion, much of Musk’s influence comes from founding and leading companies like Tesla and SpaceX. He controversially acquired the social media firm X in 2022, with plans to turn it into a multi-purpose app to compete with platforms like WeChat in China.
