Elon Musk's xAI nears completion of $24 billion valuation deal
X.AI Corp is on the brink of finalizing a funding round that could potentially value the company at over $24 billion, according to Bloomberg. This valuation includes the latest cash influx, as revealed by an anonymous source familiar with the matter. Initially, the Elon Musk-led artificial intelligence start-up was expected to wrap up a financing round of approximately $6 billion earlier this month. However, the deal has not yet been finalized and is in motion since last year.
Funding ambitions for the firm
The funding ambitions of Musk's start-up have significantly expanded since the beginning of the year. In January, Bloomberg reported that xAI was looking to raise $1 billion. However, recent developments indicate that the firm has been seeking up to $6.5 billion and aims to reach this target in the coming weeks. The deal discussions have been extended according to an anonymous source.
xAI's pitch to Silicon Valley investors
xAI, which competes with OpenAI, has been introduced to a variety of Silicon Valley investors through a pitch deck. The presentation highlighted Musk's successful track record with Tesla and SpaceX. It also emphasized that xAI and its chatbot, Grok, will be able to utilize high-quality data from X, the Musk-owned social platform. This access to data is important for building large language models (LLMs) that power the AI chatbot.
Musk's vision: "Truth-seeking" and humorous AI
Musk recently spoke at the Viva Technology conference in Paris about his vision for xAI. He emphasized the company's goal of being "as truth-seeking as possible." In a critique of other AI models created by Google and OpenAI, he described them as "pandering" to political correctness. Furthermore, Musk stated another objective for xAI is to "try to be the funniest AI," setting a unique direction for his start-up.
