xAI, the artificial intelligence firm founded by Elon Musk, has increased its valuation from $18 billion to $24 billion, following a second round of investor funding. On May 26th, the tech startup announced that it would be using the Series B funding to "build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate the research and development of future technologies." According to the company's announcement, the latest round of funds came from prominent venture capitalist firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Valor Equity Partners, and Sequoia Capital, as well as Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, a member of the Saudi royal family.
Since the company's founding in July 2023, xAI has developed and launched a generative artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, known as Grok, that is currently available to premium subscribers of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Musk reportedly hopes to build a supercomputer powered by NVIDIA chips, that will support the next version of Grok, which will be released by the fall of 2025. The company mission is "to advance our collective understanding of the universe."
The Series B funding sets xAI up to compete with OpenAI, the artificial intelligence group that was co-founded by Musk and other Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs in 2015. Musk resigned from his role as chairman of OpenAI in 2018, due to disagreements over the direction of the company. According to Goldman Sachs, private investment in AI startups is forecasted to approach $200 billion globally by 2025. Investors are hopeful that widespread usage of generative AI will substantially boost global labour productivity.
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