Elon Musk Seeks Investors for xAI in the Middle East
Elon Musk is accelerating efforts to secure funding for his artificial intelligence company xAI by engaging with some of the largest investors in the Middle East on the social media platform X. According to reports, this strategic move is expected to significantly increase the company's valuation to $45 billion. Sources close to the matter indicate that xAI is seeking new resources to compete with giants such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Alphabet (GOOGL), and Meta Platforms (META) by discussing potential investments with both existing and prospective investors.
Musk has begun talks with investors for xAI’s funding round. Although these discussions are still in their early stages, a successful deal could mark a considerable increase from the $24 billion valuation reached in the last funding round. The previous Series B funding round of $6 billion was supported by leading investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and Kingdom Holding.
xAI is preparing to compete with OpenAI. Since its inception in July 2023, the AI initiative has focused on developing Grok-1, a competitor to ChatGPT. This technology, launched for premium subscribers in November 2023, showcases the company's ambition in the industry. Recently, Musk, participating virtually in the Future Investment Initiative conference held in Riyadh, announced xAI's plans to double its computing power and highlighted that the data center in Memphis is the largest in its field.
xAI aims to rival OpenAI. OpenAI was recently valued at $157 billion and received investments from major tech giants like Microsoft (MSFT), SoftBank, and NVIDIA (NVDA). According to GlobalData's projections, the overall AI market is expected to reach a value of $909 billion by 2030. Particularly in the GenAI segment, revenues are predicted to rise from $1.8 billion in 2022 to $33 billion by 2027, representing a high annual growth rate of 80%. This potential growth underscores Elon Musk's efforts to strengthen xAI's position.