Elon Musk is looking to raise 1/44 of a Twitter for his AI company, xAI. In other words, the man behind Tesla, SpaceX and X is seeking $1 billion in funding for his next venture.
According to an SEC filing, Musk has raised about $135 million so far from four unnamed investors, with the first sale occurring on November 29. That means he still has about $865 million to go to meet his $1 billion goal.
So far, xAI is working on Grok, which is Musk’s answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard or Anthropic’s Claude. Per its website, Grok will have a “rebellious streak” and will answer “spicy” questions that other AI bots don’t engage with. The product has only been in development for two months, but will supposedly be released in beta soon to X Premium+ subscribers. A more important differentiator for the bot is that it plans to update with real-time knowledge posted on X. But for this feature to set Grok apart from the competition, it will have to be smart enough to distinguish between real news on X and misinformation.
Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI, but stepped down from the board in 2018; lately, Musk has been critical of OpenAI, especially as it fired, then re-hired, CEO Sam Altman in November, sparking mass confusion and concern within the AI industry.
It’s no small feat to raise another $865 million, but as one of the most powerful people in tech, Musk is surely up for the challenge… so long as potential investors haven’t been scared off by his (mis)management of X.