Elon Musk artificial intelligence start-up xAI concludes $6bn funding round valuing it at $24bn in coming weeks amidst heavy competition.
Elon Musk artificial intelligence start-up xAI has raised funds from major venture capital firms Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Tribe Capital in a round that values the company at $24 billion including the new funds, the company said in a Sunday blog post.
The firms have joined a funding round in which xAI raised $6bn in negotiations that began last year.
The deal values xAI at about $18bn in pre-money figures that do not include the new funding, Musk said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
xAI said the funding would be used to bring its first products to market, build advanced infrastructure and accelerate research and developmenet of future technologies.
The pitch argued xAI will have advantages over rivals through its connections to other Musk companies, including high-quality data from X, formerly Twitter, for use in training its large language model.
When xAI was first reported to be seeking new funding late last year its target figure was only $1bn. AI start-ups raised $19.15bn in venture capital funding in the first quarter, up from $16.36bn in the same quarter a year earlier, according to PitchBook, amidst a rush of investor enthusiasm for the technology following the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022.
This Cyber News was published on www.silicon.co.uk. Publication date: Mon, 27 May 2024 13:43:04 +0000