Elon Musk’s new AI startup could receive a higher-than-expected valuation of $20 billion in its first funding round, with investor demand surging as the process nears completion, the post says. I got it on paper.
Musk’s xAI (which powers the sneaky Grok chatbot) could raise $7 billion to $8 billion at its lofty valuation as it competes with Google’s Gemini AI platform and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Yes, a source told the Post.
This would exceed the $6 billion raised at an $18 billion valuation. Bloomberg reported earlier this week.
Musk, who founded Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and Boring, asked xAI’s investors to send their wire transfers by the end of Friday, before closing the window for the first round of funding, he told xAI. This was revealed by another investor.
“People are asking for a second close so they can put more money into it,” a source told the Post on Friday.
Part of the reason for the overwhelming demand was that Musk made a convincing case that Tesla’s computing power could be leveraged to help xAI, said another person who invested in the round. Ta. Electric cars use only 10% of the computing power.
While some money has flowed in from the Middle East, Mr. Musk has been careful not to accept cash from China, including Hong Kong, according to the first person to invest in the round.
A spokesperson for Mr. Musk declined to comment.
In February, the Post exclusively reported that Musk was expected to raise funding that could value xAI between $10 billion and $20 billion.
In April, Mr. Musk xAi said you need to buy 100,000 Nvidia H100 chips to train an upgraded version of the chatbot “Grok 3”. The current version of his Grok 2 required about 20,000 chips.
Despite months of rumors, Musk has repeatedly denied that xAI is raising money.
“xAI has not raised any funding and I have not had any conversations with anyone in this regard,” Musk wrote about X earlier this year.
At the time of Musk’s denial, xAI had already disclosed its plans to raise funds in regulatory filings. Late last year, xAI announced it would raise at least $1 billion through an initial public offering.
