Elon Musk's artificial intelligence start-up, xAI, has raised another $6 billion in its latest funding round, which includes participation from existing investor Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holding, as well as the Qatar Investment Authority and Oman Investment Authority (OIA), among others.
The series C funding round comes after the AI company raised $6 billion from its series B round in May, in which Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and his investment company Kingdom Holding took part.
Other investors from the previous round, including Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Sequoia Capital and Fidelity Management & Research Company, along with A16Z, BlackRock, Lightspeed, MGX and Morgan Stanley, took part in the latest fundraise, xAI said on Monday.
Global chip majors Nvidia and AMD also participated and "continue to support xAI in rapidly scaling our infrastructure", the company said.
San Francisco-based xAI is the developer of the Grok generative AI chatbot, which is a rival to the likes of Google's Gemini and market leader OpenAI's ChatGPT.
"The funds from this financing round will be used to further accelerate our advanced infrastructure, ship groundbreaking products that will be used by billions of people, and accelerate the research and development of future technologies enabling the company’s mission to understand the true nature of the universe," xAI said.
Last week, Oman's sovereign wealth fund OIA also confirmed that it acquired a stake in xAI, although it did not reveal the size and value of the deal. The move will allow the sultanate to "invest in advanced technologies within various investment sectors", the Oman News Agency said at the time.
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. The Musk-led company released its Grok-1 generative AI platform in November the same year.
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”.
At the time of Grok-1's launch, Mr Musk also said that xAI would make Grok open source, doubling down on his offensive against ChatGPT maker OpenAI.
Since its previous round in May, xAI said it has established Colossus, the "world's largest AI supercomputer" using Nvidia chips, pushed out Grok 2, added Grok on X, and rolled out xAI API, which gives developers programmatic access to its foundation models.
Grok is only available to premium users of X. While xAI recently rolled out improvements to the platform, Mr Musk recently said on X that the upcoming new version, Grok 3, will be a "major leap forward".
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Price, base / as tested Dh52,900 / Dh59,200
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Email sent to Uber team from chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi
From: Dara
To: Team@
Date: March 25, 2019 at 11:45pm PT
Subj: Accelerating in the Middle East
Five years ago, Uber launched in the Middle East. It was the start of an incredible journey, with millions of riders and drivers finding new ways to move and work in a dynamic region that’s become so important to Uber. Now Pakistan is one of our fastest-growing markets in the world, women are driving with Uber across Saudi Arabia, and we chose Cairo to launch our first Uber Bus product late last year.
Today we are taking the next step in this journey—well, it’s more like a leap, and a big one: in a few minutes, we’ll announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Careem. Importantly, we intend to operate Careem independently, under the leadership of co-founder and current CEO Mudassir Sheikha. I’ve gotten to know both co-founders, Mudassir and Magnus Olsson, and what they have built is truly extraordinary. They are first-class entrepreneurs who share our platform vision and, like us, have launched a wide range of products—from digital payments to food delivery—to serve consumers.
I expect many of you will ask how we arrived at this structure, meaning allowing Careem to maintain an independent brand and operate separately. After careful consideration, we decided that this framework has the advantage of letting us build new products and try new ideas across not one, but two, strong brands, with strong operators within each. Over time, by integrating parts of our networks, we can operate more efficiently, achieve even lower wait times, expand new products like high-capacity vehicles and payments, and quicken the already remarkable pace of innovation in the region.
This acquisition is subject to regulatory approval in various countries, which we don’t expect before Q1 2020. Until then, nothing changes. And since both companies will continue to largely operate separately after the acquisition, very little will change in either teams’ day-to-day operations post-close. Today’s news is a testament to the incredible business our team has worked so hard to build.
It’s a great day for the Middle East, for the region’s thriving tech sector, for Careem, and for Uber.
Uber on,
Dara
Avatar: Fire and Ash
Director: James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana
Rating: 4.5/5
Famous left-handers
- Marie Curie
- Jimi Hendrix
- Leonardo Di Vinci
- David Bowie
- Paul McCartney
- Albert Einstein
- Jack the Ripper
- Barack Obama
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More from Rashmee Roshan Lall
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Key findings of Jenkins report
- Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al Banna, "accepted the political utility of violence"
- Views of key Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, have “consistently been understood” as permitting “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” and “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
- Muslim Brotherhood at all levels has repeatedly defended Hamas attacks against Israel, including the use of suicide bombers and the killing of civilians.
- Laying out the report in the House of Commons, David Cameron told MPs: "The main findings of the review support the conclusion that membership of, association with, or influence by the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered as a possible indicator of extremism."
MOUNTAINHEAD REVIEW
Starring: Ramy Youssef, Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman
Director: Jesse Armstrong
Rating: 3.5/5
