Musk’s xAI Nears Funding At $18 Billion Value Soon As This Week

(Bloomberg) -- Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup X.AI Corp. is set to close its funding round at a valuation of about $18 billion as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter.

The size of the round hasn’t been finalized, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information isn’t public. The maker of AI chatbot assistant Grok was set to raise $6 billion in the round, whose participants include Sequoia Capital, Bloomberg News has reported.

Deliberations are ongoing and details such as the valuation and timing could still change, the people said. Representatives for Musk’s social network X, formerly known as Twitter, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The funding round for the OpenAI rival was being marketed via a pitch deck highlighting potential selling points for investors, touting Musk’s track record at Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, and noting that xAI will be able to train on the high-quality data from X, a person familiar with the matter has said. 

Having access to data is crucial for building large language models, the technology that powers AI chatbots, an area where xAI aims to compete with other well-funded businesses such as OpenAI. 

--With assistance from Gillian Tan and Kurt Wagner.

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