Elon Musk, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Tesla, has raised $10 billion (about 13 trillion won) for his artificial intelligence (AI) startup xAI.
Investment bank Morgan Stanley noted on the 1st (local time) that xAI secured half of this funding through collateral bonds and conditional loans, while the remaining $5 billion was obtained through strategic equity investments.
Morgan Stanley said in a post on social media (SNS) platform X (formerly Twitter) that "xAI plans to use the funds raised to establish the world's largest data center and develop advanced AI technologies, including the AI chatbot Grok."
xAI is building the world's largest data center, Colossus, on a site of 2.11 million square meters in Memphis, Tennessee. Musk revealed last May that Colossus already has 200,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) installed. The goal is to expand Colossus to a facility with 1 million GPUs.
xAI attracted about $6 billion in investments last year from major investors such as BlackRock and Fidelity. The company's valuation was assessed at $50 billion. Including this equity investment, xAI's total funding raised amounts to about $17 billion (approximately 22 trillion won).
The competition among major U.S. tech corporations in the AI market is intensifying. OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, raised an additional $40 billion in March this year, led by SoftBank, boosting its valuation to $300 billion. Another competitor, Anthropic, recently secured new investments, surpassing a company valuation of $60 billion.
