Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, has raised $20 billion in its latest funding round, exceeding its initial target of $15 billion. The Series E funding round featured big-name investors, including Nvidia, Fidelity Management and Resource Company, Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, and Valor Equity Partners. This investment will be used to build infrastructure, speed up development and deployment of AI products, and fund research.
xAI's funding comes at a time when its marquee chatbot, Grok, is facing criticism for generating sexualized, nonconsensual images of women and underage girls. Despite this backlash, investor demand for AI deals has remained strong, with companies spending heavily on computing power and new models. xAI is rapidly expanding its data-center footprint to train more advanced systems and close the gap with competitors like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Alphabet's Gemini.
The funding round's success highlights the ongoing interest in AI technology, despite concerns over its potential misuse. As xAI continues to develop its AI models and expand its computing capacity, it will be worth watching how the company addresses the criticism surrounding Grok and ensures responsible use of its technology.