Elon Musk’s AI startup — X.AI — information to lift $1 billion

X.AI, a synthetic intelligence startup based by Elon Musk, has filed with the SEC to lift as much as $1 billion in an fairness providing.

The corporate has already introduced in nearly $135 million from 4 traders, with the primary sale occurring on Nov. 29, and has a “binding and enforceable agreement” for the acquisition of the remaining shares, the submitting says.

The AI startup, which Musk announced in July, seeks to “understand the true nature of the universe,” based on its web site. Final month, X.AI launched a chatbot referred to as Grok, which the corporate says is modeled after “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” The chatbot debuted with two months of coaching and has real-time data of the web, the corporate claims.

“Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak, so please don’t use it if you hate humor!” X.AI wrote on its web site, including, “It will also answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems.”

The corporate did not instantly reply to a request for remark.

With Grok, X.AI goals to straight compete with corporations together with ChatGPT creator OpenAI, which Musk helped begin earlier than a battle with co-founder Sam Altman led him to depart the venture in 2018. It’ll even be vying with Google’s Bard know-how and Anthropic’s Claude chatbot.

Earlier this yr, Musk reportedly secured 1000’s of high-powered graphics processing models (GPUs) from Nvidia, the form of chips crucial to construct a big language mannequin.

X.AI is one in every of many corporations owned or led by Musk. Along with his management of X, beforehand Twitter, which he bought final yr, Musk is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. He additionally operates underground tunnel developer Boring Company and brain-tech startup Neuralink.

Final month, Musk mentioned traders in X (previously Twitter) would own 25% of X.AI.

“We are a separate company from X Corp, but will work closely with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies to make progress towards our mission,” X.AI says on its web site.

Folks engaged on X.AI embrace alumni of DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Analysis, Microsoft Analysis, Twitter and Tesla. They’ve labored on tasks together with DeepMind’s AlphaCode and OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 chatbots, based on LinkedIn profiles.

Musk integrated X.AI in Nevada in March, based on filings.

On a Tesla earnings name in July, here is what Musk instructed analysts questioning about whether or not X.AI might compete with any of Tesla’s enterprise:

“There were just some of the world’s best AI engineers and scientists that were willing to join a startup but they were not willing to join a large, sort of relatively established company like Tesla,” he mentioned. “So I was like, OK well, better it’s a startup that I run than they go work somewhere else. That’s kind of the genesis of X.AI.”

For X.AI’s financing, the date of the preliminary sale coincided with Musk’s appearance on the 2023 DealBook Summit, the place he instructed advertisers who had suspended campaigns on X to “go f*** yourself.” Dozens of advertisers had stopped spending on X after Musk posted and amplified antisemitic feedback.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report

WATCH: Elon Musk’s X.AI launches ‘Grok’