Updated December 25, 12:21 p.m. Pacific: Added particulars of xAI’s valuation and Kingdom Holdings’ contribution.
xAI, Elon Musk’s AI firm, has raised $6 billion in a Series C financing spherical.
The firm introduced this week that Andreessen Horowitz , Blackrock, Fidelity, Lightspeed, MGX, Morgan Stanley, OIA, QIA, Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Nvidia, AMD, and others participated.
Kingdom Holdings, the Saudi conglomerate holding firm, invested roughly $400 million within the spherical, in accordance with a public submitting. The submitting additionally revealed that xAI is now valued at $45 billion, near double its earlier valuation.
The new money brings xAI’s complete raised to $12 billion, including to the $6 billion tranche xAI raised in May.
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.
“xAI’s most powerful model yet … is currently training and we are now focused on launching innovative new consumer and enterprise products,” xAI stated in an announcement. “The funds from this financing round will be used to further accelerate our advanced infrastructure, ship groundbreaking products … and accelerate … research and development.”
Ramping up AI
Musk shaped xAI final yr. Soon after, the corporate launched Grok, a flagship generative AI mannequin that now powers a lot 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 gained’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 turn into more and more ingrained in X, the social community previously generally known as Twitter. At launch, Grok was solely obtainable to X customers — and builders expert sufficient to get the “open source” version up and operating.
Thanks to an integration with xAI’s in-house picture technology mannequin, Aurora, Grok can generate photos on X (with out guardrails, controversially). The mannequin can analyze photos as nicely, and summarize information and trending occasions — imperfectly, thoughts.
Reports point out that Grok might deal with much more X features sooner or later, from enhancing X’s search capabilities and account bios to serving to with publish analytics and reply settings. X not too long ago bought a “Grok button” designed to assist customers uncover “relevant context” and dive deeper into trending discussions and real-time occasions.
xAI is sprinting to catch as much as formidable rivals 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 companies. And it simply rolled out a standalone Grok iOS app to a check viewers.
Musk asserts that it hasn’t been a good struggle.
In a lawsuit filed towards 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 provides xAI a leg up in comparison with rivals. Last month, X modified its…
