

Elon Musk's AI startup, xAI, has successfully raised $6 billion in Series B funding, positioning itself as a formidable competitor in the AI industry against giants like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. The funding round, which values the company at $18 billion pre-money, saw participation from major investors including Valor Equity Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, and Sequoia Capital. xAI, which emerged from the social network X and launched just last year, plans to use the funds to bring its products to market, enhance infrastructure, and boost R&D. Musk's venture into AI continues with the development of Grok, a chatbot intended to rival OpenAI's ChatGPT, with advanced models and multimodal capabilities recently introduced.

xAI plans to utilize the funds from the new financing round in several key areas. Firstly, the company aims to take its first set of products to market, which includes its chatbot Grok. Secondly, xAI will focus on building advanced infrastructure to support its AI systems. Lastly, the funds will be used to accelerate the research and development of future AI technologies. The company is also likely to seek partnerships to introduce Grok to users beyond the X social network.

The pre-money valuation of xAI after the recent funding round was $18 billion. This valuation was confirmed by Elon Musk himself and reported in various news sources.