Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, has successfully raised $6 billion in a major funding round announced on December 24, 2024.
The funds will enhance xAI's advanced infrastructure as the company aims to compete directly with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. Musk emphasized the necessity for strong computational capacity on his social media platform, X.
xAI plans to double its AI supercomputer, Colossus, from 100,000 to 200,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) sourced from Nvidia. This move is intended to improve training for its AI models, including Grok.
Investors in this funding round include Nvidia, AMD, Blackrock, Sequoia Capital, and Morgan Stanley, among others. With this latest round, xAI has raised a total of $12 billion since its inception in July 2023.
According to CNBC, xAI's valuation is now estimated at $50 billion. Musk's Grok AI, which generates text and images from simple prompts, has recently been made available for free on X, sparking discussions about misinformation risks.
This funding comes amid a competitive landscape where OpenAI recently raised $6.6 billion, valuing it at $157 billion. Major tech companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are also heavily investing in AI technologies.