Elon Musk’s xAI to raise $1 billion by selling shares

The AI startup xAI, founded by billionaire Elon Musk, sent a уведомление to the SEC outlining plans to raise $1 billion via a private sale of equity securities. 

According to the document, as of November 29 the company had already sold shares totaling $134.7 million. Thus, xAI still needs to raise $865.3 million.

The Form D filing provides an exemption from taxes on the securities.

In a regulator filing, Musk is listed as chief executive and executive director, with corporate secretary Jared Birchall named as another company-affiliated officer. 

xAI declined to disclose information about the company’s valuation. 

Entrepreneur launched an AI startup in April with the aim of ‘to understand the true nature of the universe’. The team includes former staff from DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Twitter and Tesla. 

In early November the project team анонсировала the launch of Grok, the Grok chatbot, which is modeled on the guide from Douglas Adams’s science-fiction series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. 

Later he engaged in a debate with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who expressed skepticism about Grok’s humorous abilities. 

As the chatbot gained online popularity hundreds of tokens named GROK appeared. The price of a single such coin fell to zero after blockchain sleuth ZachXBT reported a link between the asset and a known scam.