The recent $6 billion funding round at xAI, announced in a blog post on Sunday, has marked a significant milestone for the company. This is the first time that xAI has publicly discussed their fundraising efforts. Prior to this announcement, Elon Musk had denied reports from outlets such as Bloomberg and the Financial Times about xAI reaching out to potential investors.
xAI’s pre-money valuation following this funding round was revealed by Musk to be $18 billion. The influx of funds will be crucial for xAI as they aim to become an alternative to OpenAI, a company Musk had previously co-founded with Altman from which he resigned from the board in 2018.
The ChatGPT maker was previously valued at over $80 billion after a deal that allowed staff to cash out their shares, as reported by The New York Times in February. However, in March of the same year, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the company of straying from its nonprofit mission by forming a partnership with Microsoft. A year ago, Musk expressed his disappointment in the direction OpenAI had taken, claiming that it had become a closed-source profit-driven company, which was the opposite of his original intentions.
