Elon Musk is currently pursuing $1 billion or R18.9 billion in funding for his upcoming venture, xAI, which is an artificial intelligence (AI) company.
As per an SEC filing, Elon Musk has secured about $135 million or R2.6 billion from four undisclosed investors.
The initial transaction took place on November 29. This indicates that he still needs to raise approximately $865 million to reach his target of $1 billion.
Up to this point, xAI is developing Grok, Elon Musk’s response to platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard.
Grok is an AI modeled after the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so intended to answer almost anything and, far harder, even suggest what questions to ask, according to xAI website.
“A unique and fundamental advantage of Grok is that it has real-time knowledge of the world via the 𝕏 platform. It will also answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems,” xAI team stated in a statement.
Grok is still a very early beta product.
Why is xAI building Grok?
xAI want to create AI tools that assist humanity in its quest for understanding and knowledge.
By creating and improving Grok, xAI aim to:
- Gather feedback and ensure we are building AI tools that maximally benefit all of humanity. We believe that it is important to design AI tools that are useful to people of all backgrounds and political views. We also want empower our users with our AI tools, subject to the law. Our goal with Grok is to explore and demonstrate this approach in public.
- Empower research and innovation: We want Grok to serve as a powerful research assistant for anyone, helping them to quickly access relevant information, process data, and come up with new ideas.
“Our ultimate goal is for our AI tools to assist in the pursuit of understanding.”
xAI is a separate company from X Corp, but will work closely with X (Twitter), Tesla, and other companies to make progress towards its mission.