Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) saw its shares rise nearly 7% yesterday, influenced in part by the news that Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, has obtained $6 billion in funding to rival OpenAI. The Series B funding round, disclosed in a blog post on May 26, marks a major investment in AI, coming less than a year after xAI was founded.
Elon Musk, a significant advocate of AI who originally supported OpenAI before its ChatGPT release in late 2022, later withdrew his support due to concerns about the potential dangers of the technology. Last year, he joined other industry figures in calling for a temporary halt in AI development.
In November, Musk introduced Grok, an alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has been integrated into X.com, the social network previously known as Twitter. Grok is the leading product of xAI, which is managed by executives with backgrounds from Alphabet’s DeepMind, Microsoft, and Tesla.
The newly acquired funds will be utilized to launch xAI’s initial products, develop sophisticated infrastructure, and speed up future technological advancements, according to the blog post.
Additionally, The Information reported last week that xAI intends to build a large supercomputer to support the next version of Grok, with Musk aiming for it to be operational by fall 2025.