Elon Musk is looking to raise $1 billion for XAI
Elon Musk is looking to raise 1/44th of Twitter for his artificial intelligence company xAI. In other words, the man behind Tesla, SpaceX, and X is seeking $1 billion to fund his next venture.
According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Musk has raised about $135 million so far from four unnamed investors, with the first sale taking place on November 29. This means he still has about $865 million left to reach his $1 billion goal.
So far, xAI has been working on Grok, which is Musk's answer to OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Bard, or Anthropic's Claude. According to his website, Grok will have a “rebellious streak” and will answer “interesting” questions that other AI robots don’t handle. The product has only been in development for a couple of months, but should be released in beta soon for X Premium+ subscribers. What sets the bot apart most importantly is that it plans to update using real-time knowledge published on X. But for this feature to set Grok apart from the competition, it must be smart enough to differentiate between real news on X and misinformation.
It is worth noting that Musk was one of the founders of OpenAI, but he resigned from the board of directors in 2018. Recently, Musk has criticized OpenAI, especially since it fired and then rehired CEO Sam Altman in November, sparking significant confusion and concern within the AI industry.
Raising another $865 million is no small feat, but as one of the most powerful people in tech, Musk is certainly up for the challenge... as long as potential investors aren't frightened by his (mis)management of X.