Elon Musk's AI Startup 'xAI' Pursues 5 Trillion Won Funding Round

Corporate Value of 24 Trillion Won

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has launched a fundraising effort to secure up to $4 billion (approximately 5.472 trillion KRW) in investment for his artificial intelligence (AI) startup xAI.

According to Bloomberg News on the 11th (local time), xAI recently began raising funds with a target of $3 billion to $4 billion (approximately 4.104 trillion to 5.472 trillion KRW).

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla [Photo by Yonhap News]

The company is valued at $18 billion (approximately 24.624 trillion KRW), and an email including about 20 pages of presentation materials is being shared among Silicon Valley venture investors.

CEO Musk founded xAI last year and introduced the AI chatbot "Grok," a competitor to ChatGPT. The materials promote the performance of Tesla and SpaceX and emphasize that xAI can train on high-quality data obtained from X (formerly Twitter), the social media platform owned by Musk. Recently, Musk announced that the next version of Grok, more advanced than GPT-4, will be unveiled in May.

Bloomberg explained, "Access to data is crucial for building large language models (LLMs)," adding, "This is the technology that powers AI chatbots, and it is the field where xAI aims to compete with companies like OpenAI."

xAI is currently attempting to raise funds in the U.S., the Middle East, and Hong Kong. Potential investors reportedly include venture capital firm Gigafund and Steve Jurvetson, an early investor in SpaceX.

Earlier in January, major foreign media also reported that xAI was pursuing up to $6 billion (approximately 8.208 trillion KRW) in investment. At that time, xAI’s company valuation was estimated at $20 billion (approximately 27.36 trillion KRW).

Bloomberg stated, "The terms of the funding round and the company valuation are fluid and subject to change."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.