Elon Musk’s xAI has raised more than $11 billion in record time

Last Friday, Musk filed an injunction to halt OpenAI’s for-profit transition, accusing it of orchestrating a “group boycott” that blocked funding for his own AI venture, xAI. In October, the Financial Times reported that OpenAI had discouraged investors from backing rival AI startups during its latest funding round.

But, even if Sam Altman and co. have been forcing investors to commit to monogamy and invest only in OpenAI, you wouldn’t exactly say xAI has struggled to find backers.

In just 16 months since its July 2023 launch, xAI has raised ~$11 billion — a milestone that took OpenAI around eight years and the Amazon-backed Anthropic nearly four years to achieve. Indeed, xAI’s latest funding round catapulted its valuation to $50 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. That surpasses Anthropic’s $19 billion valuation and the valuations of public heavyweights like Ford ($43 billion), Kroger ($43 billion), and Lululemon ($42 billion). It’s also more than the $44 billion Musk paid for X just two years ago.

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