Elon Musk’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup xAI, has secured $6 billion in the latest series B funding round, to reach a post-money valuation of $24 billion.
The funding round saw participation from investors such as Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andersen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, and Kingdom Holding, amongst others.
In a blog post, xAI announced that the funds secured will be used to take xAI’s first products to market, build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate the research and development of future technologies.
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The company also announced that it is hiring for numerous roles and seeks talented individuals ready to join a small team focused on making a meaningful impact on the future of humanity.
It is worth noting that xAI has made significant strides over the past year. From the announcement of the company in July 2023 to the release of Grok-1 on X in November, to the recent announcements of the improved Grok-1.5 model with long context capability, to Grok-1.5V with image understanding, xAI’s model capabilities have improved rapidly.
With the open-source release of Grok-1, xAI has opened doors for advancements in various applications, optimizations, and extensions of the model.
The company has disclosed that it will continue on its trajectory of progress over the coming months, with multiple exciting technology updates and products soon to be announced.
xAI was announced last year by Musk as a way to move into the rapidly growing AI sector. The company also claims it intends to “understand the true nature of the universe”.
According to Musk, xAI is primarily focused on the development of advanced AI systems that are truthful, competent, and maximally beneficial for all of humanity.
The start-up made a move into the generative AI space with the launch of Grok, its chatbot with to rival as popular models such as OpenAI ChatGPT. Since then, xAI has worked on various AI models and has released some open-source offerings.
The recent fund secured by xAI will no doubt intensify competition in the AI space, as Musk is positioning xAI to compete with OpenAI, Anthropic, and others.
According to Musk, Grok also has access to data from X, which he said will give it a leg-up. The company’s self-stated mandate is to build artificial intelligence “to advance our collective understanding of the universe.”
Musk has previously said that he believes today’s AI makers are bending too far toward “politically correct” systems. xAI’s mission, is to create AI for people of all backgrounds and political views.
Notably, the artificial intelligence (AI) startup xAI has announced plans to build its first supercomputer. The company aims to launch the project which would run the next iteration of xAI’s chatbot Grok as early as next year.