Leon Neal
Elon Musk's xAI is in talks with investors to raise $3 billion in a funding round that would value the billionaire businessman's artificial intelligence startup at $18 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
According People, venture capital firm Gigafund and investor Steve Jurvetson are among the backers considering investing in xAI's funding round.
Gigafund was co-founded in July 2017 by Stephen Oskoui and Luke Nosek, who previously co-founded PayPal (PYPL). Jurvetson is the co-founder of his own venture capital firm Future Ventures.
Both Gigafund and Jurvetson are long-time backers of Elon Musk's companies, with stakes in SpaceX, Tesla (TSLA), Boring Company, and Neuralink.
xAI, Gigafund and Future Ventures did not immediately respond to Seeking Alpha's requests for comment.
According to the WSJ tech/ai/investors-in-talks-to-help-elon-musks-xai-raise-3-billion-adding-to-industry-arms-race-84ba2328″ target=”_blank”>reportThe terms of xAI's fundraising have not been finalized and plans could change.
The latest fundraising marks another escalation in the battle for artificial intelligence (ai) supremacy between companies such as xAI, amazon-backed Anthropic (AMZN), and Microsoft-backed OpenAI (MSFT).
Last week, amazon (AMZN) revealed an additional $2.75 billion investment in Anthropic, bringing its total investment in generative ai to $4 billion. Meanwhile, Microsoft (MSFT) has already committed more than $13 billion to OpenAI.
