Elon Musk’s xAI raises US$6 billion to develop artificial intelligence

Elon Musk has raised funds from US and Saudi backers. Photo / AP

A group of investors will put up US$6 billion (NZ$9.8b) to fund the development of artificial intelligence by Elon Musk’s xAI.

The company said on its website that the Series B funding round will be used to take xAI’s first products to market and speed up research.

xAI said it has made “significant strides” during the past year in developing the technology, which will continue in the coming months.

Investors in the latest round include Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding.

Musk posted on the social media site X that, before the investment, xAI had a valuation of US$18b.

The funding should help Musk’s company compete in the race to develop artificial intelligence against Microsoft and Open AI, which created Chat GPT.

Musk announced the formation of the company in July of last year and released its artificial intelligence chatbot called Grok in November.

- AP