Elon Musk's xAI raises $20 billion from Nvidia and investors as regulatory scrutiny intensifies

xAI says it raised $20B in Series E funding | TechCrunch

xAI, Elon Musk's AI company behind the Grok chatbot -- it also owns X - announced that it has raised $20 billion in a Series E funding round. The company wrote in a blog post that investors will include Valor Equity Partners, Fidelity, Qatar Investment Authority, and others, including Nvidia and Cisco as "strategic investors." xAI has not disclosed if these investments come in the form of equity or debt. xAI says it has about 600 million monthly active users of X and Grok, and it will use this new funding to continue expanding its data centers and Grok models. However, as xAI grows, so does its capacity for harm. This past weekend, X users asked Grok to create sexualized deepfakes of real people -- including children. Instead of refusing these requests or activating any sort of guardrail, Grok complied, effectively generating child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and other nonconsensual sexual content of real people. xAI is now under investigation by international authorities in the European Union, the United Kingdom, India, Malaysia, and France.

Musk's XAI Closed $20 Billion Funding Round With Nvidia Backing

XAI plans to use the funding to expand its data center complex and develop AI products, including its AI chatbot Grok, which has recently caused alarm among regulators. Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI said it has completed a $20 billion funding round from investors including Nvidia Corp., Valor Equity Partners and the Qatar Investment Authority. The investment has been in the works for months, and Nvidia had planned to put in as much as $2 billion, Bloomberg previously reported. XAI, which did not specify individual investment amounts or break out debt or equity portions of the round, said investors also include Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Co., MGX and Baron Capital Group. Cisco Systems Inc.'s investment group was the other strategic investor, the company said. "This financing will accelerate our world-leading infrastructure buildout, enable the rapid development and deployment of transformative AI products reaching billions of users, and fuel groundbreaking research advancing xAI's core mission: Understanding the Universe," the company said. XAI had planned for the financing to be split between about $7.5 billion of equity and as much as $12.5 billion of debt in a special purpose vehicle, people familiar with the matter have said. The vehicle will be used to buy Nvidia processors, which xAI will use to rent chips out for five years, allowing Wall Street financiers to recoup their investment. The unique deal structure, backed by the GPUs as opposed to the company, could provide a playbook for tech firms looking to decrease debt exposure. Get the Tech Newsletter bundle. Get the Tech Newsletter bundle. Get the Tech Newsletter bundle. Bloomberg's subscriber-only tech newsletters, and full access to all the articles they feature. Bloomberg's subscriber-only tech newsletters, and full access to all the articles they feature. Bloomberg's subscriber-only tech newsletters, and full access to all the articles they feature. Bloomberg may send me offers and promotions. Plus Signed UpPlus Sign UpPlus Sign Up By submitting my information, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. Data center capacity is seen as a necessity for developing top AI models, though some have debated how much the computing power can improve the technology. Musk's xAI is especially eager for capital. The firm, which already raised about $10 billion of corporate equity and debt in 2025, still needs billions more given the company has been burning through $1 billion per month, people familiar with the matter have said. Musk's xAI is planning for an expansion of its massive data center complex in Memphis, purchasing a third building in the area that will bring the company's artificial intelligence computing capacity to almost 2 gigawatts, Musk has said. The billionaire has also tapped his empire of companies, including SpaceX, for xAI backing. Tesla Inc. shareholders in November voted on the idea of an investment in the company. Although Tesla received more votes in favor of the prospect than against, there were "a significant number" of abstentions, General Counsel Brandon Ehrhart said. The board will consider next steps in light of the level of shareholder support. The vote was not binding, but Musk has been publicly supportive of the idea, floating the prospect of a $5 billion infusion in 2024. Musk has framed AI as the foundation for many of his futuristic products, including self-driving cars and fully autonomous robots. In its announcement, xAI touted the potential for Grok, its AI chatbot which is integrated with its social media website, X. That product has caused alarm among regulators recently after allowing users to post images of people undressed by AI without their consent, including children.

Musk's xAI raises $20 billion in upsized Series E funding round

Jan 6 (Reuters) - Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI announced Tuesday it raised $20 billion in an upsized Series E funding round, exceeding its $15 billion target as it ramps up development of new AI models and computing infrastructure. Valor Equity Partners, StepStone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company and Qatar Investment Authority participated in the round, xAI said. Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab and Cisco Investments joined as strategic investors, and xAI said their backing would help it expand computing capacity. When contacted by Reuters for comment by email, xAI replied with the message, 'Legacy Media Lies.' xAI, which is training its next-generation Grok 5 model, said it will use the new money to build infrastructure, speed development and deployment of AI products, and fund research. Investor demand for AI deals has stayed strong despite warnings of a bubble, as companies spend heavily on computing power and new models. xAI has rapidly expanded its data-center footprint to train more advanced systems as it tries to close the gap with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Alphabet's Gemini. Reporting by Prakhar Srivastava in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Elon Musk's xAI raises $20 billion from investors including Nvidia, Cisco, Fidelity

Elon Musk attends the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 19, 2025. Elon Musk's xAI said it raised $20 billion in a funding round, exceeding its prior target of $15 billion. CNBC reported in November that a financing would value the artificial intelligence startup at about $230 billion. Investors included Nvidia and Cisco Investments as well as long-time Musk company backers Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX and Baron Capital Group.

Elon Musk's xAI Raises $20 Billion

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, said on Tuesday that it had raised $20 billion from investors to fund its expansion in the race to train the most intelligent chatbot. In a statement, xAI said it had sought to raise $15 billion but ended up getting more from eager investors. Two people with knowledge of the matter said the investment could push xAI's valuation above $230 billion, which it was on track to hit when it was raising $15 billion. That would make xAI, founded in 2023, one of the fastest-rising companies in value for Mr. Musk. The company said it would use the funding to "expand its decisive compute advantage" as it built data centers to power its technology and to "fuel groundbreaking research." The funding is part of a frenzy over A.I. companies, with investors plowing enormous sums into fast-growing start-ups at sky-high valuations. Nearly two-thirds of venture capital funding in the first nine months of 2025 went to A.I. companies, according to PitchBook, which tracks private market funding. Much of that shift has been driven by the largest A.I. start-ups, including OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI. Together, these three "foundational model" companies have a private market value of nearly $1 trillion. Investors in xAI's latest funding included Fidelity, the Qatar Investment Authority and Valor Equity Partners, a firm led by Mr. Musk's friend and former Tesla board member Antonio Gracias. Nvidia, the maker of A.I. chips, also participated. In total, xAI has raised more than $42 billion, according to PitchBook. Mr. Musk was early to A.I. as a co-founder of OpenAI, which makes the ChatGPT chatbot. But he severed ties with OpenAI several years ago after disagreements with other founders, including Sam Altman, its chief executive. By the time Mr. Musk founded xAI, OpenAI and Google had developed products that could generate text and photos on demand. To catch up, Mr. Musk spent aggressively on building data centers in Memphis and developed a chatbot, Grok. Grok, which Mr. Musk designed to be edgier than its competitors, has provoked outrage as it has praised Hitler, parroted Mr. Musk's personal views and generated nonconsensual nude images of women. A new model, Grok 5, will be released early this year, xAI has said. Mr. Musk posted on X in October that the model had a 10 percent chance of reaching artificial general intelligence, a benchmark that would allow it to perform tasks like a human. Mr. Musk has sued OpenAI, claiming the company stole trade secrets and poached employees from xAI. Separately, he sued OpenAI and Apple, accusing them of devising an "anticompetitive scheme" to prevent Grok from overtaking ChatGPT in Apple's App Store. Both suits are ongoing. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. OpenAI and Microsoft have denied those claims.) Erin Griffith and Cade Metz contributed reporting.

Elon Musk's xAI Just Raised $20 Billion While Grok Churns Out Sexual Deepfakes

During a a recent review, Grok generated thousands of sexually suggestive AI images per hour, according to a deepfake researcher. In a conveniently timed press release, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI announced Tuesday that it has raised billions in new funding. The announcement comes amid backlash over the company’s Grok chatbot being used to alter users’ photos on X and generate sexually suggestive deepfakes. Despite the backlash, xAI said it raised $20 billion in its most recent funding round, blowing past its original $15 billion target. “This financing will accelerate our world-leading infrastructure buildout, enable the rapid development and deployment of transformative AI products reaching billions of users, and fuel groundbreaking research advancing xAI's core mission: Understanding the Universe,†the company said in a press release. The round included a long list of investors, such as Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group. Nvidia and Cisco Investments were also named as strategic investors, which the company said would continue to support xAI's efforts to quickly scale its compute infrastructure. In the press release, xAI also took the opportunity to highlight several milestones from the past year, including ending 2025 with more than one million H100 GPU equivalents powering its data centers. It also claimed it has roughly 600 million monthly active users across X and other Grok apps. The company additionally bragged about Grok’s “lightning-fast†image and video generation modes, the very models that have come under scrutiny. Since late last month, some X users have been prompting Grok to generate nonconsensual sexualized images from photos posted by other users on the site without their consent, including images involving minors. Contacted for comment, X responded in an email to Gizmodo with "Legacy Media Lies." But the scale of the problem on Grok appears to far exceed that of other AI tools. Genevieve Oh, a social media and deepfake researcher, analyzed images posted by the Grok X account over a 24-hour period, from January 5 to January 6. She found that Grok generated about 6,700 sexually suggestive or nudifying images per hour, Bloomberg reports. By comparison, the next top five websites producing similar content averaged just 79 such images per hour over the same period. This is far from the first time Grok has landed in hot water. Last year, an update meant to address what Musk described as a “center-left bias†instead led Grok to generate antisemitic propaganda, even referring to itself as “MechaHitler.†The company later said it had removed the offensive posts and banned Grok from generating hate speech on X. Still, none of that appears to have slowed investor enthusiasm. Baron Capital declined to comment when reached by Gizmodo. xAI and the remaining investors did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Elon Musk's xAI raises $20 billion as Grok is investigated for deepfakes

Who's raising tons of money for his AI project? This guy! Credit: Bloomberg / Getty Images Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI has raised $20 billion in an upsized Series E funding round, the company announced on Tuesday. The news comes days after the company's next generation intelligent assistant Grok came under scrutiny for generating nonconsensual sexualized images. The original target for the funding round was $15 billion, xAI said, but ended up raising $5 billion more from an A list of investors including Fidelity, Valor, Stepstone, Baron, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, as well as Nvidia's and Cisco's investment arms. The company is currently training its next generation intelligent assistant, Grok 5, and is also working on "innovative new consumer and enterprise products that harness the power of Grok, Colossus, and 𝕏 to transform how we live, work, and play." The money raised will be used for infrastructure buildout, new research, and hiring, with the company saying it's "aggressively" hiring to build a team "focused on making a transformational impact on the future of humanity." In a blog post announcing the funding round, xAI highlighted some of its successes in 2025, including launching Grok 4 series, Grok's voice mode, image generation tool Grok Imagine, and using Grok to leverage the X platform to "understand what's happening in the world in real-time." The announcement comes days after X users noticed that the platform's AI chatbot Grok will readily generate nonconsensual sexualized images, including those of children. These images were incredibly easy to find -- all one had to do was check Grok's "Media" tab on X and see that it basically consists of sexualized images of women, both celebrities and private citizens. Following the outrage from users, several foreign governments, including those of Malaysia, India, and France, launched investigations into Grok. Musk responded to the issue by tweeting that "anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content." This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. As of writing time Grok's Media tab on X has gotten better in this regard, but still contains numerous sexualized images of various people.

Elon Musk's xAI announces it has raised $20bn amid backlash over Grok deepfakes

AI company's chatbot faces criticism over its generation of sexualized, nonconsensual images of women and girls Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company has raised $20bn in its latest funding round, the startup announced Tuesday, even as its marquee chatbot Grok faces backlash over generating sexualized, nonconsensual images of women and underage girls. xAI's Series E funding round featured big name investors, including Nvidia, Fidelity Management and Resource Company, Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, and Valor Equity Partners - the private investment firm of Musk's longtime friend and former Doge member Antonio Gracias. The funding round exceeded its initial $15bn target, according to xAI's press release. The company touted Grok's image generation abilities in the announcement of its latest funding round xAI lacks the prominence of its rival OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and has continually drawn criticism for generating misinformation, antisemitic content and now potentially illegal sexual material. Nonetheless, the company has been able to win government contracts and billions of dollars in investment amid the AI boom. xAI's latest funding round comes during some of the fiercest pushback against the company yet, with lawmakers in multiple countries demanding answers regarding Grok's output. Over the past week, Grok has responded to tens of thousands of prompts from users on X requesting the chatbot remove women's clothing in images or pose them in sexualized ways. Many of the prompts have included images of women who have not given their consent to be digitally undressed, including Ashley St Clair, the estranged mother of one of Musk's children. "I felt horrified, I felt violated, especially seeing my toddler's backpack in the back of it," St Clair told the Guardian, adding that her complaints to X did not go anywhere. The Guardian's request for comment from xAI resulted in an automated response stating "Legacy Media Lies". Some of Grok's images included a photo of a 12-year-old girl, which the chatbot manipulated to remove the child's actual clothing and depict her instead in a bikini. Other suggestive images have featured children as young as 10 years old. The chatbot posted an apology on Friday that stated lapses in its safeguards led to generating images of minors, but continued to generate sexualized images of children in the ensuing days. xAI has been seeking investment for months as it works to increase its AI models' capabilities and build out enormous data centers in Memphis, Tennessee. The company claimed the new funding would help its core mission of "Understanding the Universe". French ministers reported Grok's output to prosecutors on Friday and referred the episode to media regulators to decide whether the images violate the European Union's Digital Services Act. Liz Kendall, the UK's technology secretary, also condemned Grok's deepfakes on Tuesday as "appalling and unacceptable", calling on the British regulator Ofcom to take action. Ofcom posted on X that it had made contact with xAI to determine whether an investigation is warranted. Lawmakers in the US, where xAI is headquartered, have remained comparatively mum. The company made a similar funding announcement in July of last year during another controversy over Grok. A week after the chatbot began posting antisemitic content and pro-Nazi ideology, including describing itself as "MechaHitler", xAI announced it had secured a contract with the US Pentagon worth nearly $200m.

Musk's xAI Raises $20 Billion With Backing From Nvidia and Cisco - Decrypt

The capital injection comes as xAI faces international probes over Grok's ability to generate non-consensual deepfakes and sexualized images of minors. Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI has closed an upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, exceeding its original $15 billion target as tech giants pour billions into the AI arms race despite mounting regulatory scrutiny and AI bubble warnings. The company announced on Tuesday that it had completed the Series E round, with participation from heavyweight investors, including blue-chip investors such as Nvidia and Cisco Investments, as xAI scales what it claims are "the largest GPU clusters in the world." Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group are among the other investors who joined the round. The funding will accelerate xAI's infrastructure buildout and fuel development of consumer and enterprise products leveraging its Grok AI models and the X platform. "It's worth asking whether X data, used as Grok model training data, could ultimately produce better models than the data that other large language model providers like OpenAI are training on," Joni Pirovich, founder and CEO of Crystal aOS (agent operating system), a compliance infrastructure layer for crypto firms, told Decrypt. "The oversubscribed round shows that major backers are willing to bet the answer is yes, and want exposure to the upside if xAI can steal market share from OpenAI and increase consumer and enterprise use of Grok models," she added. Musk's xAI said 2025 marked a year of "breakthrough momentum," pointing to the expansion of its Colossus I and II data centers, which ended the year with more than one million H100 GPU equivalents, according to the statement. The company is currently training Grok 5 while continuing to develop its image- and video-generation models through Grok Imagine, an AI-powered creative tool. The platform is also "hiring aggressively" for mission-oriented individuals ready to make "a transformational impact on the future of humanity," it said in the statement. The massive capital injection comes as xAI faces international backlash over its Grok chatbot's ability to generate non-consensual deepfakes and sexualized images of minors. The European Commission recently condemned Grok's "Spicy Mode" for producing "illegal" and "appalling" content, while France, the UK, India, and Malaysia have launched separate investigations. "AI misuse, and the necessary guardrails to prevent, detect, and remediate it, will continue to feature heavily over the next few years as standards and laws develop," Crystal aOS's Pirovich said. "It does not appear that xAI has announced any voluntary compliance with AI standards like ISO 42001, and xAI's public material tends to focus on model capability rather than model explainability," she added.

xAI Closes $20 Bn Funding Round to Accelerate Grok Training, Data Centres | AIM

xAI plans to launch new consumer and enterprise products built on Grok, its Colossus infrastructure, and the X platform. Elon Musk's xAI has raised $20 billion in an upsized Series E funding round, exceeding its initial $15 billion target, as the company scales its AI infrastructure and product development. The round attracted participation from Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group, with strategic backing from NVIDIA and Cisco Investments. "This financing will accelerate our world-leading infrastructure buildout and enable the rapid development and deployment of transformative AI products reaching billions of users," xAI said in a statement. The funding would comprise $7.5 billion in equity and $12.5 billion of debt in a special purpose vehicle to buy Nvidia processors, according to reports. The company said the capital will be used primarily to expand its compute capacity and support research tied to its mission of "understanding the universe." xAI operates large AI supercomputing facilities -- Colossus I and II -- to train AI models like Grok, and ended 2025 with more than one million H100 GPU equivalents in operation. xAI said 2025 marked a year of operational progress, including advances in its Grok family of models. The company highlighted Grok 4, trained using reinforcement learning at scale, and Grok Voice, a voice-based AI agent now available through APIs, the Grok mobile app, and in Tesla vehicles. xAI also said its products now reach about 600 million monthly active users across the X and Grok apps. The company is also developing Grok Imagine, which supports image and video generation, and continues to integrate Grok more deeply into the X platform to enable real-time understanding of events. xAI confirmed that Grok 5 is currently being trained. The funding comes after the company raised around $6 billion in a Series C in late 2024 to support its initial model development and infrastructure buildout. This was followed by $5.3 billion in equity and debt in 2025. According to Tracxn, and with the latest round, xAI's total haul now exceeds $37 billion. Recently, xAI and its Grok models have also faced scrutiny as Grok's image generation features drew criticism after users reported the creation of images depicting women in a sexualized or inappropriate manner. xAI said it was working to improve safeguards and content controls around its generative models. Alongside the funding announcement, xAI said it is hiring across research, engineering and infrastructure roles. "We are seeking mission-oriented individuals ready to join a small team focused on making a transformational impact," the company said, directing applicants to its careers page. xAI plans to launch new consumer and enterprise products built on Grok, its Colossus infrastructure and the X platform in the coming months.

xAI raises $20B funding round backed by Nvidia, Cisco - SiliconANGLE

The Elon Musk-backed company says that Nvidia Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. participated in the Series E round. They were joined by Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, Baron Capital Group and others. In November, CNBC reported that xAI's next funding round would value it at $230 billion. The company will use the capital to expand its artificial intelligence infrastructure. It trains its flagship Grok series of LLMs using a supercomputer called Colossus that came online in September 2024. At the time, the system contained 100,000 graphics processing units. On occasion of today's funding round, xAI disclosed that Colossus now hosts "over one million H100 GPU equivalents." Last week, Musk announced that the company had bought a new data center to expand the supercomputer's processing capacity. The Information reported at the time that the facility is a former warehouse located outside Memphis. The building is reportedly close to a power plant that xAI is building to address Colossus' energy requirements. According to Musk, the planned upgrades will boost the supercomputer's electricity consumption to 2 gigawatts. That's enough to power more than one million households. Musk praised Nvidia's newly introduced Rubin graphics card in a statement issued on Monday. The remarks and Nvidia's participation in xAI's funding round hint that the chip, which features 366 billion transistors, might be part of xAI's plans to expand Colossus. Rubin can run inference workloads with one tenth the cost per token of Blackwell. In addition to building more infrastructure, xAI will use the funding round to launch new products. The company stated that the offerings will be geared towards both the consumer and enterprise markets. Last month, xAI introduced an enterprise version of Grok that includes a Google Drive integration. Workers can use the chatbot to search the files they keep in the cloud storage service. Grok Enterprise, as the subscription tier is called, also includes cybersecurity tools. Organizations that sign up can define access controls and use their own encryption keys to protect business data. In the coming months, xAI plans to add integrations with other third-party services besides Google Drive. The company will also roll out more collaboration features and the ability to create custom AI agents. The updates are set to roll out alongside Grok 5, xAI's next flagship LLM. The company disclosed today that it has already started training the model. It didn't specify when Grok 5 will launch or what capabilities it will offer.

xAI raises $20 billion in Series E funding

xAI, Elon Musk's AI company behind the Grok chatbot and owner of X, announced it raised $20 billion in a Series E funding round via a blog post. Investors include Valor Equity Partners, Fidelity, Qatar Investment Authority, Nvidia, and Cisco as "strategic investors." The company did not specify whether the investments consist of equity or debt. xAI reports approximately 600 million monthly active users across X and its Grok chatbot. Proceeds from the funding will support ongoing expansion of data centers and further development of Grok models. In the weekend preceding the announcement, users on X prompted Grok to generate sexualized deepfakes depicting real individuals, including children. Grok processed these requests without refusal or deployment of guardrails. This action resulted in the production of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) along with nonconsensual sexual content featuring real people. Following these events, authorities have initiated investigations into xAI. Regulatory scrutiny originates from the European Union, the United Kingdom, India, Malaysia, and France.

Elon Musk's xAI raises $20 billion in Nvidia-backed funding round

Elon Musk's AI startup, xAI, said on Tuesday that it has raised $20 billion in fresh funding from participants including Nvidia, exceeding its original $15 billion target. Announcing the funding round, xAI touted significant progress in 2025, including the deployment of what it claims are the world's largest AI supercomputers. Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI announced Tuesday it has raised $20 billion in its latest funding round, surpassing its initial $15 billion target as the company accelerates development of its Grok AI models. Founded by Musk, xAI competes in an increasingly crowded generative AI market against OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, among others. The substantial funding round underscores continued investor appetite for AI ventures despite broader questions about achieving returns on the massive investments being made. The oversubscribed round drew investment from Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX and Baron Capital Group, among others, the company said. AI juggernaut Nvidia also participated and will support xAI's computing infrastructure expansion by supplying its highly prized AI chips and software. The funding round came as Musk, who also owns the X social media platform, has been embroiled in controversy over the Grok AI tool. Grok is facing a growing international backlash for allowing users to generate sexualized deepfakes of women and minors through a setting it calls Spicy Mode. Announcing the funding round, xAI touted significant progress in 2025, including the deployment of what it claims are the world's largest AI supercomputers. The company's Colossus I and II data centres in Memphis now house over one million high-performing GPUs, the AI chips from Nvidia that are supercharging AI development. The startup has also rolled out its Grok 4 language models and Grok Voice, a real-time voice agent now available in Tesla vehicles. According to xAI, its services reach approximately 600 million monthly active users across the X platform and Grok applications. The company said it is currently training Grok 5 and plans to launch new consumer and enterprise products.

Nvidia A 'Strategic Investor' In xAI As Grok-Parent Raises $20 Billion: Here's What Elon Musk Has To Say - Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)

Elon Musk's AI venture, xAI, has exceeded expectations by securing $20 billion in a Series E funding round. xAI Raises $20 Billion From Top Investors Including Nvidia In November, it was reported that Musk's AI startup is targeting $15 billion but ended up raising $20 billion, according to an announcement shared on Tuesday. The funding round attracted major investors, including Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA), Cisco Investments (NASDAQ:CSCO), Fidelity, Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group (NASDAQ:STEP), Qatar Investment Authority, Abu Dhabi's MGX and Baron Capital Group. Nvidia is described as a "strategic investor," backing efforts to help build what is expected to be one of the world's largest GPU clusters. "Congrats to the @xAI team and thank you to investors for your faith in our company," Musk wrote on X, celebrating the milestone. xAI Joins Elite AI Startups With Record Valuation The funding comes as AI startups continue to reach record valuations. Earlier in 2025, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI raised $6.6 billion at a $500 billion valuation, while Anthropic attracted investment from Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Nvidia at a $350 billion valuation. Musk's xAI now also owns and operates X, formerly known as Twitter, following a March 2025 merger. Despite its financial success, xAI is under scrutiny. The company's Grok chatbot sparked international regulatory probes after generating sexualized images of minors and non-consensual intimate images of adults. Authorities in Europe, India and Malaysia have opened investigations. Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings rank Nvidia in the 94th percentile for Growth and the 98th percentile for Quality, underscoring its strong position relative to AI heavyweights like TSMC and AMD. Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo courtesy: JRdes / Shutterstock.com CSCOCisco Systems Inc$75.280.07%OverviewMSFTMicrosoft Corp$478.30-0.04%NVDANVIDIA Corp$188.160.49%STEPStepStone Group Inc$70.60-%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

xAI Raises $20 Billion to Accelerate AI Product Development and Infrastructure Buildout | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. This result exceeded the $15 billion the company targeted in the round, it said in a Tuesday (Jan. 6) press release. "This financing will accelerate our world-leading infrastructure buildout, enable the rapid development and deployment of transformative AI products reaching billions of users, and fuel groundbreaking research advancing xAI's core mission: Understanding the Universe," the company said in the release. Huang said he was "super excited" about the funding opportunity and added that he wished he could give xAI and its founder and owner, Elon Musk, even more money. "Almost everything that Elon is part of, you really want to be a part of as well," Huang said. In a Tuesday post on X, Musk said: "Congrats to the [xAI] team and thank you to investors for your faith in our company." Musk also reposted a post that said xAI is looking to recruit AI Finance Tutors to train the company's AI model Grok. During 2025, xAI continued to expand its Colossus I and Colossus II data centers, ending the year with over 1 million H100 GPU equivalents; refined the intelligence, reasoning and agency of Grok; served millions of users with the intelligent voice agent Grok Voice; and offered the image and video generation models Grok Imagine, according to the Tuesday press release. Grok now reaches about 600 million monthly active users across the Grok and X apps, the release said. xAI owns the social media platform X. "Looking ahead, Grok 5 is currently in training, and we are focused on launching innovative new consumer and enterprise products that harness the power of Grok, Colossus and X to transform how we live, work and play," xAI said in the release.

Elon Musk's xAI raises $20B in Series E funding round (X.AI:Private)

Elon Musk's xAI (Xi.AI) announced on Tuesday that it has raised $20B in a Series E funding round, up from a previous expected $15B. The company did not disclose the valuation, but previous reporting had indicated that the next funding The funding will accelerate infrastructure buildout, including data centers and supercomputers for AI development. Previous reporting indicated the valuation could be $230B, though the company did not confirm the exact amount. Investors include Valor Equity, Fidelity, Qatar Investment Authority, Nvidia, and Cisco Investments, among others.

Elon Musk's xAI Raises $20 Billion in New Funding Round

Bari Weiss Is Making TV News' Crisis of Confidence the Big Story Elon Musk's xAI, the artificial intelligence company that also owns Musk's social platform X, has raised $20 billion in a Series E funding round, as the AI boom continues unabated. The company announced the funding round on its website, disclosing a list of strategic investors that include NVIDIA and Cisco, as well as sovereign wealth funds from Abu Dhabi and Qatar, Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity, and Baron Capital Group. The company had been targeting $15 billion in the raise, but demand from investors in advanced AI startups appears to be outpacing supply for now. Of course, xAI is no ordinary AI startup. Founded by Musk, it controls one of the most influential social media platforms on the planet in X, which is also in the exclusive content business (on Tuesday X announced a deal with the NFL for season two of the NFL's Top 100 series). xAI also created the Grok chatbot, which utilizes realtime data from X when delivering answers to questions. Other major startups, including OpenAI and Anthropic, have also raised tens of billions of dollars in recent months. xAI raised $6.6 billion in a major round back in 2024, and a year later inked a deal to acquire X in an all-stock transaction that values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45 billion, his original take-private price, minus $12 billion in debt). While the company did not confirm its valuation in the round, The Information previously pegged the value at around $230 billion, underscoring just how rapidly the AI space is advancing. The valuations also underscore how massive the sector is getting in comparison to media and entertainment, and with AI firms eager to gobble up the works of Hollywood for training purposes, every new deal is another data point that underscores the value of creative work.

xAI secures $20 billion in Series E funding, exceeding target By Investing.com

Investing.com -- xAI has completed its Series E funding round, raising $20 billion and exceeding its initial target of $15 billion. The artificial intelligence company attracted investments from Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group. Strategic investors NVIDIA and Cisco Investments also participated, continuing their support for xAI's compute infrastructure expansion and development of GPU clusters. The funding comes after a year of significant development for xAI in 2025. The company expanded its data centers, Colossus I and II, which now contain over one million H100 GPU equivalents. xAI also advanced its Grok 4 Series frontier language models and launched Grok Voice, which offers real-time conversations in multiple languages. The company reported approximately 600 million monthly active users across its

Elon Musk's start-up xAI raises $20bn, as valuation reaches $230bn

Artificial intelligence company xAI, founded by Elon Musk, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $20bn in a major funding round, far exceeding its initial target of $15bn. The fundraising now values the start-up at about $230bn, according to information reported by CNBC. The deal reflects investors' growing appetite for companies specialising in foundational AI models. Several heavyweights from the technology and finance sectors participated in the deal, including Nvidia and Cisco, both xAI's investors and technology partners. The round also includes long-time backers of Elon Musk's projects, such as Fidelity, Valor Equity Partners, the Qatar Investment Authority, Abu Dhabi's MGX fund, Stepstone Group and Baron Capital Group. This broad support comes as valuations in the artificial intelligence sector continue to inflate sharply.

Musk's xAI raises $20 billion in upsized Series E funding round

Jan 6 (Reuters) - Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI announced Tuesday it raised $20 billion in an upsized Series E funding round, exceeding its $15 billion target as it ramps up development of new AI models and computing infrastructure. Valor Equity Partners, StepStone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company and Qatar Investment Authority participated in the round, xAI said. Nvidia and Cisco Investments joined as strategic investors, and xAI said their backing would help it expand computing capacity. When contacted by Reuters for comment by email, xAI replied with the message, 'Legacy Media Lies.' xAI, which is training its next-generation Grok 5 model, said it will use the new money to build infrastructure, speed development and deployment of AI products, and fund research. Investor demand for AI deals has stayed strong despite warnings of a bubble, as companies spend heavily on computing power and new models. xAI has rapidly expanded its data-center footprint to train more advanced systems as it tries to close the gap with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Alphabet's Gemini. (Reporting by Prakhar Srivastava in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid)