Elon Musk stated yesterday that his artificial intelligence company, X.AI, has not engaged in discussions with investors to secure financial funding. This comes after an earlier media report suggesting the startup’s efforts to raise up to $6 billion, according to Reuters.
Musk, in a post on the X platform, stated, “X.AI is not raising capital, and I have not had any discussions with anyone about this.”
The Financial Times reported that X.AI is in talks to raise $20 billion and cited sources familiar with the matter, stating that the startup is negotiating with family offices in Hong Kong and targeting sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East.
The race in artificial intelligence has intensified with numerous investors pouring significant amounts into startups looking to capitalize on technology that Silicon Valley has increasingly focused on over the past year. According to the newspaper, Musk’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Last week, Musk denied a report that X.AI had secured commitments of $500 million from investors to achieve a $1 billion funding goal. The CEO of Tesla has been explicit about his plans to build safer artificial intelligence. Musk participated in the founding of OpenAI in 2015 but resigned from its board in 2018.
X.AI launched the GPT-based chatbot program “GPT-3” last year, competing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Musk also warned earlier this month against developing artificial intelligence and robots outside Tesla unless he gains more control over voting in the electric car manufacturing company.
He mentioned that he wouldn’t be comfortable leading Tesla in the field of artificial intelligence unless he had 25% voting control.
With the popularity of ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence industry has become a magnet for funding in a challenging financing environment for startups. In recent months, the Anthropic-backed company, Inflection AI, supported by Microsoft, has also raised funds.
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