The AI startup said in a blog post on Sunday that it has raised $6 billion for its Series B funding round.
“There will be more to announce in the coming weeks,” Musk said in an X post Monday morning.
The mercurial billionaire said in a subsequent post on X that xAI’s pre-money valuation was $18 billion. The term financial refers to the value of a company before any equity investment.
Pre-money valuation was $18 billion
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 27, 2024
Sunday’s announcement marks the first time xAI has spoken about its fundraising efforts. Musk had repeatedly denied previous reports from Bloomberg and the Financial Times on raising awareness of xAI among investors.
The influx of funding will be key for Musk, who has envisioned xAI as an alternative to OpenAI, a company he co-founded with Altman. Musk left the OpenAI board in 2018.
The maker of ChatGPT was valued at $80 billion or more following a deal that allowed staff to cash out its shares, The New York Times reported in February, citing people familiar with the matter.
Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in February, accusing the company of violating its nonprofit mission by partnering with Microsoft.
A year ago, Musk expressed disappointment with what OpenAI had become, saying it was “not at all what I wanted.“
“OpenAI was created as an open source company (that’s why I named it ‘Open’ AI), a non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but it has now become a privately held company. maximum profit, effectively controlled by Microsoft,” Musk wrote on X.
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