X investors are winning big with Elon Musk’s xAI stake: report

Investors that backed Elon Musk’s turbulent takeover of Twitter could potentially be made “whole” thanks to the rising valuation of xAI, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s artificial intelligence startup.

As noted in a report from the Financial Times, xAI is closing a $5 billion fundraising round that would value the AI startup at about $50 billion. This suggests that xAI has effectively doubled its valuation in just six months.

Citing people reportedly familiar with the matter, the publication claimed that only investors who backed xAI in previous rounds were permitted to invest in the company’s recent funding round. These include Fidelity, Larry Ellison, Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Jack Dorsey Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz, among others.

Elon Musk had given backers that supported his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter a 25% stake in xAI, an artificial intelligence startup that was founded last year. Thanks to this, Musk’s backers in his Twitter acquisition are effectively given a first-class ticket to one of the AI segment’s rapidly rising players.

As per one investor in Musk’s companies, it is really never a good idea to bet against the Tesla and SpaceX CEO. “There are few adages in tech that really hold up. Never bet against Elon is one,” the investor reportedly noted. This was despite X reportedly losing a significant chunk of its valuation since Musk took over the platform.

While new to the AI game, xAI has risen quickly, thanks it part to its computing capability. In late October, NVIDIA posted a press release announcing that xAI’s Colossus supercomputer cluster, which is comprised of 100,000 Hopper GPUs, has been completed in Memphis, Tennessee. The supporting facility and state-of-the-art supercomputer were built by xAI and NVIDIA in just 122 days. Such installations typically take years to set up.