Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup – X.AI – is filing to raise $1 billion

Elon Musk speaks on stage during the New York Times Dealbook Summit 2023 at Jazz at Lincoln Center on November 29, 2023 in New York City.

Slaven Vlasic | Getty Images

X.AI, an artificial intelligence startup founded by Elon Musk, has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise up to $1 billion in a stock offering.

The company has already brought Nearly $135 million From four investors, the first sale will take place on November 29, and it has a “binding and enforceable agreement” to purchase the remaining shares, the filing said.

The artificial intelligence startup, which Musk announced in July, seeks to “understand the true nature of the universe,” according to its website. Last month, X.AI launched a chatbot called Grok, which the company says is modeled after “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” The company claims that the chatbot debuted after two months of training and has instant knowledge of the Internet.

“Grok is designed to answer questions with a pinch of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don’t use it if you hate humor!” “It will also answer interesting questions that most other AI systems reject,” X.AI wrote on its website.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

With Grok, X.AI aims to compete directly with companies including OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, which Musk helped launch before a conflict with co-founder Sam Altman led to him leaving the project in 2018. It will also compete with Google and Anthropic’s Bard technology . Cloud Chatbot.

Earlier this year, Musk It is said to be secured Thousands of high-power graphics processing units (GPUs) from Nvidia, the type of chips needed to build a large language model.

X.AI is one of many companies owned or led by Musk. In addition to controlling Company X, formerly Twitter, which he bought last year, Musk serves as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. He also runs the Boring Company, a developer of underground tunnels, and brain technology startup Neuralink.

Last month, Musk said investors in X (formerly Twitter) would do so Owns 25% From X.AI.

“We are a separate company from X Corp, but we will work closely with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies to make progress toward our mission,” X.AI says on its website.

People working on X.AI include alumni of DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Twitter, and Tesla. They have worked on projects including DeepMind’s AlphaCode and OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, according to their LinkedIn profiles.

Musk founded X.AI in Nevada in March, according to filings.

On Tesla’s earnings call in July, here’s what Musk told analysts wondering if X.AI might compete with any of Tesla’s businesses:

“There were just some of the best AI engineers and scientists in the world who were willing to join a startup, but they weren’t willing to join a relatively large, established company like Tesla,” he said. “So I said, ‘Well, I’d better run a startup than have them go work somewhere else.’ That’s kind of the genesis of X.AI.”

— CNBC’s Laura Kolodny contributed to this report

He watches: Elon Musk X.AI launches “Grok”