The
start-up has been in talks with family offices in Hong Kong and
is targeting sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East for the
funding, according to the report, which cited multiple people
familiar with the matter.
The AI race has been heating up with several investors signing
big checks for start-ups looking to capitalize on what has
captured Silicon Valley's attention over the past year.
A $6-billion fundraise would be much higher than the $1 billion
goal xAI had set last month in a filing with the U.S. Securities
and Exchange Commission.
At $20 billion, xAI's valuation would be a fraction of OpenAI's,
but in line with some other peers such as Google-backed
Anthropic.
Musk has approached investors in Japan and South Korea for the
latest fundraise, the Financial Times reported. His office did
not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Morgan Stanley is coordinating the fundraise, according to the
report. The bank was one of several that helped finance Musk's
takeover of social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
Last week, Musk denied a report that xAI had secured $500
million in commitments from investors toward a $1 billion
funding goal.
The CEO of Tesla has been vocal about his plans to build safer
AI. Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but stepped down from its
board in 2018.
Last year, xAI launched "Grok", a chatbot rivaling OpenAI's
ChatGPT.
Musk also warned about developing AI and robotics outside Tesla,
earlier this month, unless he gets more voting control at the
electric-vehicle maker. He said he would be uncomfortable
building Tesla into an AI leader unless he had 25% voting
control.
Thanks to the popularity of ChatGPT, the AI industry has been a
rare bright spot in a subdued start-up funding environment.
Anthropic and Microsoft-backed Inflection AI have also raised
funds in recent months.
(Reporting by Urvi Dugar, Niket Nishant and Akash Sriram in
Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Shounak Dasgupta)
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