{"id":26601,"date":"2024-04-28T04:27:04","date_gmt":"2024-04-28T09:27:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=26601"},"modified":"2024-04-28T04:27:15","modified_gmt":"2024-04-28T09:27:15","slug":"xai-elon-musks-ai-venture-raises-6-billion-to-take-on-openai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=26601","title":{"rendered":"xAI, Elon Musk\u2019s AI Venture, Raises $6 Billion to Take on OpenAI"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">xAI, Elon Musk\u2019s artificial intelligence startup aiming to rival ChatGPT developer OpenAI, is set to close a massive $6 billion funding round that values the 10-month-old company at a staggering $18 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">TechCrunch&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/04\/25\/xai-elon-musks-openai-rival-is-closing-on-6b-in-funding-and-x-his-social-network-is-already-one-of-its-shareholders\/\">reports<\/a>&nbsp;that according to a trusted source close to the deal, xAI\u2019s funding round is expected to finalize in the coming weeks, giving investors a 25 percent stake in the company. The investment terms were recently adjusted upward from the initial $3 billion raise at a $15 billion pre-money valuation due to strong investor demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Notable participants in the round include Sequoia Capital, Future Ventures (co-founded by Musk\u2019s longtime friend Steve Jurvetson), and likely Valor Equity Partners and Gigafund, whose founders are part of Musk\u2019s inner circle. Interestingly, Musk\u2019s social media platform X (formerly Twitter) already owns a stake in xAI and is set to benefit from the AI company\u2019s future success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">xAI\u2019s stated goal is to connect the digital and physical worlds by leveraging training data from Musk\u2019s various companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Company, and Neuralink. The AI startup\u2019s chatbot, Grok, is already integrated into X\/Twitter as a paid add-on, providing the social network with massive distribution while also serving as a customer for xAI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Musk\u2019s pitch to investors envisions a sprawling virtual cycle, with Grok being fed data from his other companies to master the physical world in countless ways, starting with enabling truly self-driving cars and enhancing the capabilities of Tesla\u2019s humanoid robot, Optimus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The xAI founder has been openly critical of OpenAI, the company he co-founded in 2015 but left in 2018 due to disagreements over its direction. Musk has publicly criticized OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman and recently open-sourced the architecture of xAI\u2019s earliest chatbot, \u201cGrok-1,\u201d in a move to differentiate his venture from OpenAI\u2019s closed approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/tech\/2024\/04\/27\/xai-elon-musks-ai-venture-raises-6-billion-to-take-on-openai\/\">Breitbart<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>xAI, Elon Musk\u2019s artificial intelligence startup aiming to rival ChatGPT developer OpenAI, is set to close a massive $6 billion funding round that values the 10-month-old company at a staggering $18 billion. TechCrunch&nbsp;reports&nbsp;that according to a trusted source close to the deal, xAI\u2019s funding round is expected to finalize in the coming weeks, giving investors [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":26602,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5783],"tags":[4149,3070,28096,24244,9823],"class_list":["post-26601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sci-tech","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-elon-musk","tag-enterprise-xai","tag-financing","tag-openai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26603,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26601\/revisions\/26603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}