Elon Musk's xAI company is now valued at $24 billion thanks to increased funding pledges.

 

Elon Musk's AI company, now valued at $24 billion, has raised an additional $6 billion from investors, including Saudi princes and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley.

According to a blog post published by xAI on Sunday, investors that contributed to the second round of investment included Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, Andreesen Horowitz, and Sequoia Capital.

Musk, who established xAI in July of last year, stated in a post on X on Monday that the company had a $18 billion valuation prior to obtaining the additional money and that there would be "more to disclose in the coming weeks."

The new funding, according to xAI's article, will be utilized to establish advanced infrastructure, speed research and development of future technologies, and bring the company's "first products to market."

The money positions the business as a possible competitor of OpenAI, the AI research team that created the enormously well-liked chatbotChatGPT. Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI, but he left the position of chairman six years ago, in part due to differences in the company's strategy.

xAI, a company that Musk also controls, revealed in November that it was creating an AI-powered chatbot named "Grok" for certain paying members of X, the social media network that was formerly known as Twitter. At the time, the millionaire claimed in a post on X that Grok was receiving training by having  "real-time access" to the website's content.

Since then, xAI has released updates to Grok 1.5 that include better lengthy context and picture capabilities. It is also hiring engineers and researchers in Palo Alto, San Francisco, and London.

Investors have poured enormous sums of money into AI startups in recent years, drawn by the technology's promise to completely transform both the way people live and work.

Microsoft (MSFT), which has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, is the company's largest shareholder. Amazon (AMZN) declared last year that it will contribute up to $4 billion to Anthropic AI in exchange for a stake in the business.

Even the largest companies find it difficult to introduce AI solutions to the market.

Google unveiled an AI-generated search engine earlier this month that summaries results so users do not have to browse through numerous links to quickly get the answers to their concerns. However, the feature drew criticism for providing inaccurate or misleading information, which led the business to walk away.  bring back a few results that are not accurate.