Mashable: Elon Musk's startup xAI, focused on artificial intelligence, has successfully secured $6 billion in funding. This significant investment, announced through a blog post on May 26, aims to expedite xAI's efforts in challenging its former allies at OpenAI.

xAI is pleased to announce..https://t.co/uu0ioPgS8V — xAI (@xai) May 27, 2024

The Series B round, occurring less than a year after xAI's initial launch, represents one of the substantial investments in the emerging field of AI tool development, reports Gadgets360.

Musk, who had previously supported OpenAI, withdrew his backing after the introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022. Citing concerns about the potential risks associated with AI, he joined a prominent group of industry leaders in advocating for a pause in AI development last year.

Elon Musk introduced Grok, a competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT, in November. Grok was trained on and incorporated into X.com, the social media platform previously known as Twitter. This marks xAI's most prominent achievement, spearheaded by executives with backgrounds at Alphabet's DeepMind, Microsoft, and Tesla.

The company plans to utilize the funding to launch its initial products, establish cutting-edge infrastructure, and expedite the progress of upcoming technologies, as stated in their blog.

Musk disclosed that the company's pre-money valuation stood at $18 billion in a post on X. Noteworthy venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz supported the fundraising efforts, making it one of the largest in the industry to date.

Join xAI if you believe in our mission of understanding the universe, which requires maximally rigorous pursuit of the truth, without regard to popularity or political correctness https://t.co/jWEGDDnVk1 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 27, 2024

In the beginning of the year, Musk mentioned that it took around 20,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs to train the Grok 2 model. He also stated that the Grok 3 model and subsequent models will need 100,000 Nvidia H100 chips.