Elon Musk’s venture into the artificial intelligence domain, xAI, has made a significant move by filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to raise up to $1 billion through an equity offering, as per Tuesday’s filing.
According to the filing, xAI has already secured $134.7 million in equity financing from the total proposed offering of $1 billion, signaling investor confidence in the company’s AI initiatives, Reuters news report said.
Despite regulatory concerns surrounding AI and its potential for misinformation propagation, fundraising in the AI sector has maintained a strong trajectory, buoyed by successful launches such as OpenAI’s widely-used ChatGPT and its substantial $10 billion backing from Microsoft.
Elon Musk, known for his vocal stance on AI safety, reiterated xAI’s objective during a Twitter Spaces event earlier this year. He emphasized the company’s approach to develop a “maximally curious” AI, focusing on fostering natural curiosity rather than explicitly programming morality into its AI systems.
In a bid to challenge industry giants like Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing AI, Musk launched xAI in July, touting it as a “maximum truth-seeking AI,” aiming to steer clear of what he perceives as AI efforts within Big Tech entrenched in censorship.
While Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015, the company behind ChatGPT, he departed from its board in 2018. Notably, xAI recently launched “Grok,” a chatbot rivaling OpenAI’s ChatGPT, aiming to carve a niche in the burgeoning AI market.
Musk revealed in a November post that xAI, which debuted earlier this year, would integrate into his social media platform X and also be available as a standalone application, underscoring the company’s aspirations for widespread accessibility.
The xAI team comprises talent from renowned AI research entities such as Google’s DeepMind and Microsoft’s parent company, bringing together expertise from top-tier AI research firms to drive innovation within the AI landscape.
