xAI, Elon Musk’s AI firm, has raised $6 billion, based on a submitting with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.
Investors gave a minimal of $77,593, per the submitting (97 participated, however the doc doesn’t reveal their identities). xAI later introduced (confirming some earlier reporting) that Andreessen Horowitz , Blackrock, Fidelity, Kingdom Holdings, Lightspeed, MGX, Morgan Stanley, OIA, QIA, Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Nvidia, AMD, and others numbered amongst them.
The new money brings xAI’s whole raised to $12 billion, including to the $6 billion tranche xAI raised this spring. CNBC reported in November that xAI was aiming for a $50 billion valuation — double its valuation of six months prior.
According to the Financial Times, solely traders who’d backed xAI in its earlier fundraising spherical had been permitted to take part on this one. Reportedly, traders who helped finance Musk’s Twitter acquisition got entry to as much as 25% of xAI’s shares.
Ramping up AI
Musk fashioned xAI final yr. Soon after, the corporate launched Grok, a flagship generative AI mannequin that now powers a variety of options on X, together with a chatbot accessible to X Premium subscribers and free customers in some areas.
Grok has what Musk has described as “a rebellious streak” — a willingness to reply “spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems.” Told to be vulgar, for instance, Grok will fortunately oblige, spewing profanities and colourful language you received’t hear from ChatGPT.
Musk has derided ChatGPT and different AI programs for being too “woke” and “politically correct,” regardless of Grok’s personal unwillingness to cross sure boundaries and hedge on political topics. He’s additionally referred to Grok as “maximally truth-seeking” and fewer biased than competing fashions, though there’s proof to recommend that Grok leans to the left.
Over the previous yr, Grok has develop into more and more ingrained in X, the social community previously often known as Twitter. At launch, Grok was solely out there to X customers — and builders expert sufficient to get the “open source” version up and working.
Thanks to an integration with the open picture generator Flux, Grok can generate pictures on X (with out guardrails, controversially). The mannequin can analyze pictures as properly, and summarize information and trending occasions (imperfectly, thoughts).
Reports point out that Grok could deal with much more X capabilities sooner or later, from enhancing X’s search capabilities and account bios to serving to with put up analytics and reply settings.
xAI is sprinting to catch as much as formidable opponents like OpenAI and Anthropic within the generative AI race. The firm launched an API in October, permitting prospects to construct Grok into third-party apps, platforms, and providers. And it simply launched a standalone Grok iOS app to a check viewers.
Musk asserts that it hasn’t been a good struggle.
In a lawsuit filed in opposition to OpenAI and Microsoft, OpenAI’s shut collaborator, attorneys for Musk accuse OpenAI of “actively trying to eliminate competitors” like xAI by “extracting promises from investors not to fund them.” OpenAI, Musk’s counsel says, additionally unfairly advantages from Microsoft’s infrastructure and experience in what the attorneys describe as a “de facto merger.”
Yet Musk typically says that X’s information offers xAI a leg up in comparison with rivals. Last month, X modified its privateness coverage to permit third events, together with xAI, to coach fashions on X posts.
Musk, it’s value noting, was one of many unique founders of OpenAI, and left the corporate in 2018 after disagreements over its route. He’s argued in earlier fits that OpenAI profited from his early involvement but reneged on its nonprofit pledge to make the fruits of its AI analysis out there to all.
An xAI ecosystem
xAI has outlined a imaginative and prescient based on which its fashions could be skilled on information from Musk’s numerous corporations, together with Tesla…
