Today, according to people familiar with the matter, xAI, an AI company founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, will begin new fundraising talks. xAI's potential valuation could reach US$120 billion (about RMB 868.7 billion), making it the world's second-most valuable artificial intelligence company after competitor OpenAI, which is currently valued at US$300 billion.
The talks for xAI's latest fundraising are still in the early stages, and investors plan to invest about US$20 billion, but the amount and valuation are still subject to change, according to people familiar with the matter. If the deal goes through, it would triple the company's valuation from $40 billion in December 2023. It's worth noting that in March this year, Musk merged his social platform X (formerly Twitter) into xAI in an all-stock deal, raising the latter's valuation to $80 billion, while the X platform alone was valued at $33 billion.
The fundraising plan is seen as a key move by Musk to accelerate the race in the AI field. The close integration of xAI and X Platform can realize the synergy of social data and AI technology. The previously launched Grok large-scale model is gradually integrated into X user services.
It is noteworthy that Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but left in 2018 due to strategic differences. As the valuation of the new project reached one-third of OpenAI's funding last year, the two companies may compete directly in the field of general artificial intelligence.