xAI is reportedly in advanced discussions to raise $15 billion in equity at a $230 billion valuation.
That’s according to a report Wednesday (Nov. 19) by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing sources familiar with the Elon Musk-run artificial intelligence (AI) company’s plans.
The report notes that this new valuation would mark a massive jump from the $113 billion xAI revealed after acquiring Musk’s X social media platform earlier this year. Sources told the WSJ that the terms of the new funding were shared with investors by Musk’s wealth manager, Jared Birchall, on Tuesday (Nov. 18) evening.
The news comes days after a similar report from CNBC about a planned $15 billion funding round. Musk had called that report “false” in a post on X. The multibillionaire offered the same response to a report in September that xAi had raised $10 billion, valuing it at $200 billion.
PYMNTS reached out to xAi for comment on the WSJ report, with the company offering an almost immediate three-word reply: “Legacy Media Lies.”
The WSJ also noted that xAI had in June raised $5 billion in equity and $5 billion in debt to help fund the development of its Colossus data center in Memphis, with Musk’s SpaceX rocket company contributing $2 billion to that round.
Musk has also supported the notion of his car company Tesla investing in xAI, the WSJ report said, though shareholders had a mixed response to that proposal at a recent meeting.
Before the meeting, Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm told the WSJ she questioned the logic of this investment and said the board hadn’t yet performed due diligence needed to proceed.
Last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said his company would invest in xAI, telling CNBC he was “super excited” about the funding opportunity and that he wished he could give Musk even more money. An earlier Bloomberg News report had said the company would invest $2 billion.
“Almost everything that Elon is part of, you really want to be part of as well,” Huang said.
Musk also recently introduced Grokipedia, an AI-powered version of Wikipedia designed to “purge out” what Musk called “the propaganda” on Wikipedia, according to a post on X. It gets its name from Grok, the AI chatbot behind xAI.
The CEO had previously attacked Wikipedia as “woke” and blasted it for using media outlets like The New York Times and NPR as sources in many of its entries.
Source: https://www.pymnts.com/