ElonMuskAI startups are seeing a significant wave of support as xA The race is on to catch up with rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic in a tight race.
According to the Wall Street Journal, investors with close ties to the CEOs of Tesla and SpaceX are in talks to help xAI raise $100 million in a round of funding.FinancingSources said Steve Jewison and venture capital firm Gigafund are among the potential backers.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Jefferson is a friend of Musk, has served on the board of directors of SpaceX, and has served on the board of directors of Tesla. Meanwhile, Gigafund co-founder Luke Nosek is also a member of the board of directors of SpaceX and is known as the "PayPal gang" with Musk.
Musk founded xAI last year as a competitor to ChatGPT's parent company OpenAI, which he co-founded but later sued, claiming it had abandoned its original nonprofit mission. xAI launched its own chatbot, Grok, in November and released an updated version last month.
News of a possible $3 billion funding round comes as xAI seeks more fundingup to dateThe move comes as rival OpenAI has secured a $13 billion commitment from Microsoft and Anthropic has raised $6 billion from backers including Google and Amazon.
In January, the Financial Times reported that Musk was seeking to raise up to $6 billion for xAI, although it later denied that he was raising funds. In December, a regulatory filing showed that xAI was seeking to raise $1 billion from investors and had received nearly $135 million in funding.
Meanwhile, the battle for investor support in the field of artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly fierce, and xAI and its competitors are also competing for artificial intelligence talent. After news broke on Wednesday that Tesla's Ethan Knight had become the company's fourth engineer to join xAI, Musk wrote on Twitter that Knight had planned to defect to OpenAI.
“He either joins xAI or they join him,” Musk wrote, noting that he also raised salaries for AI engineers. He added: “The war for talent in AI is the craziest I’ve ever seen!”