Elon Musk's xAI wants to raise $1 billion to develop artificial intelligence
Eva Deschamps / December 10, 2023
The spring-founded company hopes to raise up to $1 billion in a stock offering, according to its SEC filing. It says it has already raised nearly $135 million from four investors, with the first sale taking place on November 29, and says it has entered into a "binding agreement" for the remaining shares to be sold.
The head of Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter) and Neuralink created xAI in response to the rise of OpenAI, which popularized generative artificial intelligence (AI). This technology, which made its mark in 2023, can produce text, images and lines of code on the basis of a simple query in everyday language.
In early November, Elon Musk introduced "Grok", a generative AI chatbot like ChatGPT with real-time access "to the world's knowledge via the X platform", a "unique and fundamental advantage" according to the xAI website.
"Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so don't use it if you hate humor!" the start-up goes on to say. "It will also answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems. »
Access to Grok's prototype is currently reserved for a limited number of users.OpenAI secured a $13 billion commitment from Microsoft earlier this year.