Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI has raised $6 billion (roughly Rs. 49,857 crore) to accelerate the challenge to its erstwhile allies in OpenAI.
The Series B round, announced in a blog post on May 26, comes less than a year after xAI's debut and marks one of the largest investments in the nascent field of AI tool development. Musk had been an early proponent of artificial intelligence, supporting OpenAI before introducing ChatGPT in late 2022.
He later withdrew his support for the company and has advocated caution due to the potential dangers of the technology. He was among a large group of industry leaders who called for a pause in AI development last year.
In November, Musk launched a rival to OpenAI's ChatGPT, called Grok, which was formed and integrated into X.com, the social network formerly known as Twitter. So far, this has been the most visible product of xAI's work, which is led by executives with previous experience at DeepMind, Microsoft and Alphabet's Tesla.
The company intends to use the funds to bring its first products to market, build advanced infrastructure and accelerate the development of future technologies, he said in the blog.
Its pre-money valuation was $18 billion (roughly Rs 1,49,571 crore), Musk said in a post on X. Marquee, including Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, backed the fundraising, which is one of the largest so far in the industry.
Microsoft has invested about $13 billion (roughly Rs. 1,08,024 crore) in OpenAI, while Amazon.com invested about $4 billion (roughly Rs. 33,238 crore) in Anthropic.
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