Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, has secured a US$2 billion investment from SpaceX as part of a broader US$5 billion equity round, Reuters reported, quoting a report by the Wall Street Journal on July 12.
The funding values xAI, now merged with Musk’s social media platform X, at an estimated US$113 billion. The integration strengthens Musk’s ecosystem, with xAI’s Grok chatbot now supporting Starlink customer service and eyed for broader applications, including in Tesla’s humanoid Optimus robots.
Despite criticism over Grok’s controversial outputs, Musk has touted it as “the smartest artificial intelligence (AI) in the world”. The funding will help xAI continue its aggressive push into large-scale model training and infrastructure development, as it battles OpenAI, Google and Anthropic for AI supremacy.
Neither SpaceX nor xAI have commented publicly on the reported deal. But the sizable capital infusion underscores Musk’s commitment to developing proprietary AI technology across his corporate empire from space to cars to chatbots.
