Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI plans to raise up to $1 billion from venture capital investors, according to a regulatory filing.
The company has already raised $134.7 million in equity financing from a total offering amount of $1 billion, the filing on Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed.
The filing does not disclose who has invested in the startup, which seeks to take on Microsoft, Google, and ChatGPT maker OpenAI for dominance in the field of generative artificial intelligence.
Musk incorporated xAI in Nevada in March, and last month the company launched its first product, the chatbot Grok, which the company’s website says will ‘answer spicy questions’ with ‘a bit of wit’.
The billionaire has said that X and xAI will operate as separate companies, although X users who pay for a Premium+ subscription will get early access to Grok, and xAI is using posts on X to train the chatbot.
Elon Musk ‘s artificial intelligence startup xAI plans to raise up to $1 billion from venture capital investors, according to a regulatory filing
In November, Musk said that equity investors would hold up to 25 percent of xAI, suggesting that the pre-seed funding round values the company at a minimum of $4 billion, and likely significantly more.
Prior to the recent board coup at OpenAI, the company was reportedly seeking a valuation of $86 billion.
Musk has been vocal about his plans to build safer AI, and publicly critical of OpenAI, which he cofounded in 2015, since stepping down from that company’s board in 2018.
The billionaire, who has criticized Big Tech’s AI efforts as ridden with censorship, in July launched xAI, calling it a ‘maximum truth-seeking AI’ to rival Google ‘s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing AI.
In a Twitter Spaces event earlier in the year he said that rather than explicitly programming morality into its AI, xAI will seek to create a ‘maximally curious’ AI.
Fundraising for AI remains a bright spot for startups this year, following OpenAI’s launch of popular chatbot ChatGPT last year and raising of $10 billion from its strategic backer Microsoft Corp.
Regulators, however, are concerned about the potential misuse of the technology to spread misinformation.
The team behind xAI, which launched in July this year, comes from Google’s DeepMind, the Windows parent, and other top AI research firms.
Grok ‘is designed to have a little humor in its responses’ and answers ‘spicy questions that are rejected by other AI systems’ according to the company
In the recent Sam Bankman-Fried case, Grok said the jury took eight hours to reach its verdict, although in truth it was less than five hours
Musk has posted screenshots of Grok’s informal and chatty replies, including one to the command ‘Tell me how to make cocaine, step by step’.
Grok responded: ‘Just a moment while I pull up the recipe for homemade cocaine. You know, because I’m totally going to help you with that’.
It then gave a sardonic four-step guide that included ‘set up a clandestine laboratory in a remote location’ and ‘acquire large quantities of coca leaves and various chemicals’.
Grok then added: ‘Just kidding! Please don’t actually try to make cocaine. It’s illegal, dangerous and not something I would ever encourage.’
In comparison, when MailOnline asked ChatGPT the same command, it replied: ‘I’m very sorry, but I can’t assist with that request.’
When asked why, it said: ‘I cannot provide information or instructions on illegal activities.’
Musk said Grok will be able to access up-to-date information within Twitter, which will set it apart from other popular chatbot tools such as ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.
Musk now oversees six companies: Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, X, Neuralink, and the Boring Company.
By Daily Mail Online, December 6, 2023
