Musk’s AI firm raises $6b, to hire more engineers globally

Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has secured a $6 billion investment to expand and become more competitive.
xAI, which hoped to compete with rivals like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, informed yesterday that investors in the Series B funding include Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, and Kingdom Holding.

With the new funding, the company announced it is now hiring for numerous roles and seeks talented individuals ready to join “a small team focused on making a meaningful impact on the future of humanity.”

The firm said it is recruiting several engineers to fill roles in its Palo Alto, San Francisco, and UK offices.

The firm said it plans to deploy funds from the new financing to take its first set of products to market, build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate the research and development of future technologies.

“xAI will continue on this steep trajectory of progress over the coming months, with multiple exciting technology updates and products soon to be announced. xAI is primarily focused on the development of advanced AI systems that are truthful, competent, and maximally beneficial for all of humanity. The company’s mission is to understand the true nature of the universe,” it said.

Musk formed xAI last year and released its chatbot Grok 1.0 model in November to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Later, the company made the model available through a chatbot to Premium+ users, who pay $16 a month on X. In April, the company released the new Grok 1.5 model and also allowed Premium users on X to access the chatbot.

According to Musk, Grok leverages “real-time access” to information on X, and, like ChatGPT, the model has internet browsing capabilities, enabling it to search the web for up-to-date information about specific topics.

Musk, who is one of the earliest investors in AI technology, co-founded OpenAI. He has, however, been a major critic of OpenAI since he severed ties with the company. In March this year, he sued OpenAI and its co-founder Sam Altman for allegedly betraying its mission statement by turning the company into a profit-making venture.

Musk claimed that OpenAI co-founders, Altman and Greg Brockman, had convinced him to help found and bankroll the startup in 2015 with promises it would be a non-profit focused on countering the competitive threat from Google.