Elon Musk's AI company raised $6 billion as part of its Series B funding.
The company, called xAI, has raised funding from multiple investors including Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding.
The funding will enable xAI to bring its first product to market, as well as build out advanced infrastructure and strengthen research and development of future technologies.
“xAI has made great progress over the past year,” the company said in a press release announcing the funding. “From the company's July 2023 launch, to the release of X-version Grok-1 in November, to the recent announcement of an improved Grok-1.5 model with long context capabilities and Grok-1.5V with image understanding capabilities, xAI's model capabilities have improved rapidly. With the open source release of Grok-1, xAI has opened the door to advancements in various applications, optimizations, and extensions of its models.”
The company looks to continue its “rapid progress trajectory over the coming months” and will provide further updates on its products and technology soon.
The company is also looking to join a team “focused on meaningfully impacting the future of humanity,” in line with its mission statement of understanding “the true nature of the universe.”
Musk, who served on OpenAI's board of directors in its first year, recently sued the nonprofit behind ChatGPT, alleging that CEO Sam Altman's for-profit operation has “undermined” the organization's founding agreement. The lawsuit claims that OpenAI's contract with Microsoft is not aligned with the company's original mission of creating AI programming “for the benefit of humanity,” but is instead driven by financial gain.
“It was developed by OpenAI with the help of contributors, [Musk] “Unlike other algorithms intended for the public good, GPT-4 is now effectively a Microsoft proprietary algorithm and has been integrated into the company's Office software suite,” the complaint states.
The funding for xAI comes amid a period of high profile advances in AI this month, but not without controversy: Last week, OpenAI came under fire for releasing an audio recording of ChatGPT that sounded like Scarlett Johansson, which was eventually removed after Johansson revealed that Altman had contacted her to help expose the AI.
Meanwhile, Google has published an “AI Overview” that allows its AI to answer queries typed into Google – and the answers can sometimes be shockingly wrong.
