The round, which also saw investments from Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Fidelity Management & Research Company, will support the market launch of xAI's products, the company said on Monday.
“The funds from the round will be used to take xAI’s first products to market, build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate the research and development of future technologies,” it said.
It added that “multiple exciting technology updates and products” will soon be announced.
The company's valuation before the round was $18 billion, Mr Musk, owner of X, formerly Twitter, said in a post on the platform.
Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holding, in conjunction with Prince Alwaleed, already holds a substantial investment position in X.
After an initial purchase of shares in 2011, both Kingdom Holding and its chairman increased their ownership in October 2015, jointly accounting for a major shareholding of X, according to the company’s website.
Mr Musk launched xAI in July last year amid the growing demand for generative AI to compete with dominant market player OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft, with about $13 billion investment.
It released its Grok-1 generative AI platform in November, followed by the improved Grok-1.5 in March.
Benchmarks presented by xAI claim that Grok-1.5's performance is almost at par with generative AI's leading large language models, including Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's GPT.
Grok is being positioned by the company as a “conversational AI for understanding the universe” – aligned with Mr Musk's mission statement when he announced in July last year that xAI was meant “to understand reality” and “the true nature of the universe”.
OpenAI soon retorted, saying that Mr Musk was just regretful he wasn't part of the company's current success.
The generative AI space is witnessing strong competition with OpenAI this month introducing GPT-4o, a “new flagship model that can reason across audio, vision and text in real time” that it hopes will attract more users to its platform.
The company is widely expected to disclose its strategy for generative AI at its annual developers conference in early June.
Earlier this year, Apple chief executive Tim Cook said that the tech company was “currently investing significantly in this area”.
“We believe that will unlock transformative opportunities for users when it comes to productivity, problem-solving and more,” he said in February during an annual shareholder meeting.
Scores:
Day 4
England 290 & 346
Sri Lanka 336 & 226-7 (target 301)
Sri Lanka require another 75 runs with three wickets remaining
Starring: Bdoor Mohammad, Jasem Alkharraz, Iman Tarik, Sarah Taibah
Director: Majid Al Ansari
Rating: 4/5
Our legal columnist
Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
Cricket World Cup League Two
Oman, UAE, Namibia
Al Amerat, Muscat
Results
Oman beat UAE by five wickets
UAE beat Namibia by eight runs
Fixtures
Wednesday January 8 –Oman v Namibia
Thursday January 9 – Oman v UAE
Saturday January 11 – UAE v Namibia
Sunday January 12 – Oman v Namibia
GIANT REVIEW
Starring: Amir El-Masry, Pierce Brosnan
Director: Athale
Rating: 4/5
SPECS
Mini John Cooper Works Clubman and Mini John Cooper Works Countryman
The flights
The closest international airport to the TMB trail is Geneva (just over an hour’s drive from the French ski town of Chamonix where most people start and end the walk). Direct flights from the UAE to Geneva are available with Etihad and Emirates from about Dh2,790 including taxes.
The trek
The Tour du Mont Blanc takes about 10 to 14 days to complete if walked in its entirety, but by using the services of a tour operator such as Raw Travel, a shorter “highlights” version allows you to complete the best of the route in a week, from Dh6,750 per person. The trails are blocked by snow from about late October to early May. Most people walk in July and August, but be warned that trails are often uncomfortably busy at this time and it can be very hot. The prime months are June and September.
