Elon Musk’s latest entrepreneurial project, artificial intelligence startup xAI, has raised another $6 billion in funding as it seeks to compete with OpenAI, Google, and a flurry of new AI ventures. In a blog post on Sunday, the company said participants in the Series B round include venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, and Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, among other investors. Musk previously unveiled a more “woke” competitor to OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, called Grok, though it currently lags behind ChatGPT’s capabilities. “The funds from the round will be used to take xAI’s first products to market, build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate the research and development of future technologies,” the company said in the blog post. xAI added that it is “primarily focused on the development of advanced AI systems that are truthful, competent, and maximally beneficial for all of humanity” and that its mission is, somewhat vaguely, “to understand the true nature of the universe.”
