Musk's xAI seeeks up to $200 billion valuation in fresh funding talks

By Ed Ludlow and Kurt Wagner

  XAI Holdings, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence and social media company, is in talks to raise more money at a valuation of as much as $200 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

The company recently raised $10 billion, split evenly between debt and equity. Now, it’s moving to raise another $10 billion, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. 

 

In a post on X Friday, Musk said, “xAI is not seeking funding right now. We have plenty of capital.” Representatives for xAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.  

 

If the new financing materializes, it would bring xAI’s total new backing to $20 billion — a goal that has been discussed by the company, Bloomberg earlier reported. XAI waited until the release of its new model, Grok 4, to proceed with the additional fundraising effort, the person said. 

 

The Financial Times earlier reported some details of the financing. 

 

Launched earlier this week, xAI’s Grok 4 AI model is “smarter than almost all graduate students, in all disciplines, simultaneously,” Musk claimed in a livestream Wednesday. The company also said that its new AI system scores higher on certain benchmarks than OpenAI and other leading competitors.

 

XAI — the result of a merger of X, formerly Twitter, with Musk’s AI startup xAI — would see its valuation climb in the latest deal, and cement its place as one of the world’s most valuable private companies if it reaches the $200 billion valuation.  

 

In addition to the launch of Grok 4, this week X Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino announced her resignation, creating a leadership hole atop the social network. That news came just a day after xAI was forced to remove inappropriate Grok posts from X that included antisemitism and praise for Adolf Hitler. “Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X,” the company wrote.

 

As it raises large sums of money, Musk’s company is also spending quickly. Bloomberg previously reported that xAI is burning through $1 billion a month as it builds more advanced AI models.