The startup, which was spun out of social network X last year, has been in a fierce competition with rivals such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. Musk, who is also an early investor in OpenAI, sued the startup and its co-founder Sam Altman earlier this year for allegedly betraying its mission statement. xAI has also released its chatbot model, Grok 1.0, and made it available to Premium+ users on X.
Key takeaways:
- Elon Musk's AI startup, xAI, has raised $6 billion in a new funding round, making it one of the largest deals in the AI space.
- Several high-profile backers, including Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding, have invested in xAI’s Series B funding.
- xAI plans to use the funds to take its first set of products to market, build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate the research and development of future technologies.
- Musk, who is also an early investor in OpenAI, sued the startup and its co-founder Sam Altman in March, accusing them of betraying their mission statement and becoming a “closed-source de facto subsidiary” of Microsoft.