PARIS: Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk’s startup xAI said it had raised $6 billion from investors in its latest funding round, as it battles stiff competition in the artificial intelligence market.

The firm, whose flagship product is the Grok chatbot, garnered support from US venture capitalists, chipmakers NVIDIA and AMD, and investment funds from Saudi Arabia and Qatar among others.

Musk has repeatedly warned that AI poses a risk to human civilisation, but he is pushing hard for a bigger slice of investment in the sector and xAI already raised $6 billion in May.

The company is now one of the world’s most valuable startups with an estimated $50 billion valuation, though still dwarfed by chief competitor OpenAI’s estimated $157 billion.

Despite the sky-high estimates, critics have pointed out that AI firms are burning through cash and still have no clear path to profitability.

Announcing the funding on Monday, xAI said it would use the cash injection to “ship groundbreaking products that will be used by billions of people”.

Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2024