The (almost) almighty Elon Musk, the renowned billionaire entrepreneur, has recently rebutted a Bloomberg report claiming that his artificial intelligence startup, xAI Corp., has secured $500 million in funding. This funding was reportedly part of a larger aim to raise $1 billion in investment. Musk responded on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, labeling the report as “simply not accurate.”
Bloomberg’s initial report suggested that xAI was finalizing a funding round that could value the startup at an impressive $15 to $20 billion. The report further speculated that Musk, along with potential investors, was close to concluding the terms of the funding arrangement. An interesting aspect of the negotiations included the possibility of obtaining computing power from xAI, either as a part of the deal or as a complete alternative to equity.
xAI‘s filing last month with the U.S. SEC hinted at plans to raise $1 billion through an equity offering. According to this document, the startup had already sold equity worth $134 million.
Elon Musk, also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, founded xAI in response to the burgeoning field of generative AI, which has captured the interest of major global tech firms. Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI, the organization behind ChatGPT, had left its board in 2018 with ambitions to create an AI-focused on truth-seeking and understanding the universe’s nature.
While xAI operates independently from the social media platform X, both entities are reportedly collaborating. xAI has also been working closely with Tesla.