Saudi-Based Kingdom Holding Backs Elon Musk's xAI in Series B Round

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence start-up, xAI, has secured $6 billion in a series B funding round with notable participation from Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and his investment firm, Kingdom Holding. Other significant investors include Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and Fidelity Management & Research Company.

The newly raised funds will be directed towards launching xAI’s first products, developing advanced infrastructure, and accelerating R&D for future technologies. The company, valued at $8 billion before this funding round, promises “multiple exciting technology updates and products” in the near future, according to Musk. This financial boost aligns with Musk’s strategy to position xAI as a strong competitor to OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft with approximately $13 billion in investments.

Launched in July 2023, xAI aims to challenge dominant players in the generative AI market, notably OpenAI. It introduced its Grok-1 generative AI platform in November, followed by Grok-1.5 in March. xAI claims that Grok-1.5’s performance rivals leading AI models, including Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, and OpenAI's GPT.