Musk’s AI startup seeks to raise $1 bn

Elon Musk is looking to raise $1 billion for his artificial intelligence company xAI that he hopes will compete with ChatGPT’s Open AI.

An official filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday said the company Musk created earlier this year had already raised $134.7 million and plans to raise $1 billion in total.

The filing added that there was a firm agreement to raise all the funds necessary to reach the goal, indicating that Musk could have deals in place for the full billion.

Last month, Musk offered a preview of his company’s ChatGPT-like chatbot, called “Grok,” which he said was trained with data from X, formerly Twitter, which Musk bought for $44 billion a year ago. .

The wealthy entrepreneur and founder of electric car maker Tesla founded xAI in July after hiring researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Tesla and the University of Toronto.

He said the company’s mission was “to understand the true nature of the universe.”

Since ChatGPT, OpenAI’s generative AI tool, burst onto the scene a year ago, the technology has been an area of ​​fierce competition between tech giants Microsoft and Google, as well as Meta and startups like Anthropic and Stability AI.

OpenAI reportedly secured $13 billion in commitments from Microsoft earlier this year.

Musk’s funding round comes as OpenAI endured a chaotic few days last month that saw CEO Sam Altman return as the company’s strongman after being laid off for a few days.

OpenAI was reportedly planning an imminent stock sale that valued the company at between $80 and $90 billion, but that sale was delayed due to chaos in the boardroom.

© 2023 AFP