xAI was formed by Elon Musk last summer, and according to a recent article from The Verge, it’s already making waves after announcing a huge $6 billion fundraising round. The company claims that this funding would support the creation of cutting-edge infrastructure, expedite research and development into new technologies, and help launch xAI’s initial products.
Musk has had prior experience with AI. Along with other people, he co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with Sam Altman, who is currently the CEO. But in 2018, he left the firm for differences in philosophy on its goals and course, particularly OpenAI’s shift from open-source AI models to closed, proprietary models that require a subscription to access. After that, Musk became one of OpenAI’s most outspoken detractors.
With the launch of xAI in July of last year, Musk formally made a comeback to the generative AI space. The business has now made a concerted effort to develop cutting-edge AI systems that it promises would be “truthful, competent, and maximally beneficial for all of humanity.”
A more aggressive variant of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Grok is one of xAI’s initial products. At the moment, only X Premium subscribers have access to it. Grok-1 scored better than models such as Llama-2-70B and GPT-3.5, but it was still not as well as Anthropic’s Claude3, OpenAI’s GPT-4, Google’s Gemini, and Meta’s open-source Llama 3.
Big names like Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and even Saudi Arabian Prince Al Waleed bin Talal invested in this most recent funding round. A few months ago, there were rumors that xAI had raised their goal to an incredible $6 billion, which Musk had first disputed. Last year, documents revealed the company was seeking to raise to $1 billion in equity capital.
It is not easy to develop the hardware necessary to power AI at this advanced level, and it is undoubtedly expensive. A study from only last week stated that, to power an improved version of Grok on a supercomputer, xAI would require an astounding 100,000 of Nvidia’s current H100 chips, which range in price from $30,000 to $40,000.
Musk intends to use these potent resources in grand ways. According to reports, he told investors that the new data center will be operational by fall 2025, which would be a major advancement in xAI’s technological capabilities.
It will cost money to keep up this AI talent, chip, and technology race. In addition to the billions that Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta are investing in their own AI initiatives, major tech corporations have already poured billions of dollars into AI startups such as Anthropic.
In particular, Microsoft and OpenAI have forged a multibillion-dollar alliance. OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, is looking to raise even more trillions to transform the world chip market.
Elon Musk has expressed a desire to keep most AI and robotics capabilities outside of Tesla to concentrate more on outside projects, but Tesla will still hire AI engineers for self-driving cars. As part of a larger mission, he discusses escaping the conventional confines of auto manufacture.
Meanwhile, Tesla is preparing for its annual meeting on June 13 and the vote by shareholders on whether to restore Musk’s record-breaking $56 billion compensation package. This is a big step considering Musk’s considerable power in the tech industry.
Musk has made significant contributions to AI research over the years, and his company, xAI, is currently leading the way in AI advancements. Seeing how these initiatives develop and which of xAI’s contributions will be remembered during this fast advancement of AI will be fascinating.