xAI continues its meteoric growth. Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) startup is looking to raise additional funding to boost its valuation to $40 billion.
Doubling the computing power of xAI
According to information collected by the Wall Street Journaldiscussions around new fundraising are currently only in their early stages. If successful, they would allow xAI to increase its valuation by $16 billion compared to its previous funding round, organized in the spring.
This news appears as this Thursday, October 24, Elon Musk spoke during a videoconference appearance at the Future Investment Initiative event, which was held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He explained that his goal was to double xAI’s access to computing power, a resource so prized by artificial intelligence publishers. It is indeed valuable for training models, which requires the processing of a colossal amount of data. Likewise, it allows AIs to generate responses quickly, which is essential when using models.
XAI already owns the largest supercomputer in the world. Named Colossus and located in Memphis, Tennessee, the facility has 100,000 Nvidia H100 processors. They will soon be supplemented by an additional 100,000 units, as well as 50,000 H200s, the manufacturer’s even more advanced AI chips.
Competition with OpenAI
The supercomputer’s mission is notably to train Grok-3, which is scheduled for release by the end of the year. It will be “ the most powerful AI in the world at that time », Estimated Elon Musk. For comparison, the second iteration of the AI was trained on just 15,000 H100 processors.
If xAI’s valuation reaches $40 billion, it will remain minimal compared to that of OpenAI, its biggest rival. At the beginning of October, the company led by Sam Altman raised 6 billion dollars, bringing its valuation to the crazy sum of 157 billion dollars, positioning it in the world’s top 3 startups alongside SpaceX and ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. For its part, xAI would still rank among the most valuable start-ups in the United States.
As a reminder, Elon Musk is at war with OpenAI, which he co-founded. He believes that the company has strayed from its main goal, and has even taken legal action against its managers to force them to comply, in vain.
- xAI is looking to raise new funds to reach a valuation of $40 billion.
- Elon Musk aims to double the computing power of his startup.
- xAI already owns the largest supercomputer in the world.
