Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI said Sunday that it has raised $6 billion, helping to close the funding gap with OpenAI, Anthropic and other rivals in the red-hot industry.
The funds would be used “to bring xAI's first products to market, build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate research and development of future technologies,” the company said in a x.ai/blog/series-b” title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>statement.
Musk, who founded xAI in July, x.com/elonmusk/status/1794975702812426595″ title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>saying In a social media post, the funding round valued the company at $18 billion, not including new money. Investors included Silicon Valley heavyweights Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, along with Saudi Arabia's prince Alwaleed bin Talal.
Investors and big tech companies like Google, Meta and Microsoft have poured billions into companies developing artificial intelligence systems, seeking to profit as they become integrated into many aspects of business and daily life. These investments also reflect the high costs of running generative ai systems, which require enormous amounts of processing power to generate text, sounds and images.
In a recent research report on the latest advances in ai, analysts at Deutsche Bank noted that “constant improvements to already surprisingly powerful generative ai models show how the technology has quickly become a game-changer for industry leaders.” industry”. They said the industry's major players could not “afford to be left behind in the early struggles before their market positions are strengthened.”
OpenAI, which introduced the ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022, has roughly tripled its valuation over the past year to $80 billion, with about $13 billion in backing from Microsoft. Anthropic, which was founded in 2021, has raised about $8 billion, much of it from amazon, and reached a valuation of about $15 billion. tech giants like Google and Meta have also spent heavily on their own ai technologies, which are quickly being incorporated into their product lines.
(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December, alleging copyright infringement of news content related to artificial intelligence systems.)
Musk, who also runs Tesla, SpaceX and other companies, co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but later parted ways with the company when he became disillusioned with its direction and the ai industry in general.
In March it sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, accusing them of breaching a contract by putting profits and commercial interests in the development of artificial intelligence ahead of the public good. That same month, Musk published the raw computer code behind the xAI chatbot, an escalation in the heated debate over whether open sourcing these systems could make them more secure or invite misuse.
Last week, during a remote appearance at a technology conference in Paris, Musk said that xAI “still has a lot of catching up to do” to be competitive with technology from OpenAI and Google. “Maybe by the end of this year we will have it.”
