Elon Musk’s AI company has raised $6 billion as part of its Series B funding.
The company, called xAI, raised funds from several investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding.
With the funding, xAI will bring its first products to market while building advanced infrastructure and ramping up its the research and development of future technologies.
“xAI has made significant strides over the past year,” the company said in a press release announcing its funding. “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.”
Looking forward, the company aims to continue the “steep trajectory of progress over the coming months” and noted updates on the company’s products and technology are forthcoming.
The company also shared job openings to join the team “focused on making a meaningful impact on the future of humanity,” in line with the company’s mission statement of understanding “the true nature of the universe.”
Musk, who served on the original board of directors for OpenAI, recently sued the nonprofit behind ChatGPT, targeting CEO Sam Altman’s allegedly profit-driven direction of the company as setting the organization’s founding agreement “aflame.” The suit points to OpenAI’s contracts with Microsoft as driven by financial gain rather than aligned with the company’s original mission to create AI programming “for the benefit of humanity.”
“Although developed by OpenAI using contributions from [Musk] and others that were intended to benefit the public, GPT-4 is now a de facto Microsoft proprietary algorithm, which it has integrated into its Office software suite,” the suit reads.
xAI’s funding comes as advancements in AI are taking center stage this month, but not without controversy. Last week, OpenAI came under fire for rolling out a ChatGPT voice that sounded like Scarlett Johansson, ultimately pulling the voice as Johansson revealed that Altman had reached out to her to play a part in the AI’s rollout.
Google, meanwhile, unveiled its “AI Overview” that allows its own AI to answer queries typed into Google — sometimes to shockingly incorrect results.
