The billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk launched xAI in July 2023 as a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter, that Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI is in discussions with investors about a funding round that would give the company a valuation of about $40 billion.
WSJ said AI hopes to raise several billion dollars in the new funding round, adding that the cash raised would be added to the $40 billion valuation.
The report said the funding discussions are at an early stage, meaning that terms may change or the talks may fall apart.
Elon Musk did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The company raised $6 billion in a series B round in May, valuing it at $24 billion post-money, from investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital.
In March, xAI said it would open-source its ChatGPT challenger “Grok,” allowing the public to experiment with the technology’s underlying code. This move aligns xAI with firms such as Meta and France’s Mistral, which also have open-source AI models.
