BlackRock, a16z back xAI Elon Musk in a $6B funding round

Key Takeaways

xAI raised $6B in Series C funding with major investors like BlackRock, a16z, and Fidelity.
NVIDIA and AMD support the xAI infrastructure through advanced GPU technology.

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI name On Monday it had raised $6 billion in a Series C funding round, backed by major investors including BlackRock, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, and other high-profile investors .

Strategic investors NVIDIA and AMD also participated in the round, continuing their support for xAI infrastructure scale efforts. The funding round was not exclusive to xAI's existing investors, many of whom had previously supported Musk's acquisition of X, according to the Financial Times.

The latest funding, which was first disclosed through an SEC filing last week, brings xAI's total funding to $12 billion. It follows a $6 billion round that was completed earlier in 2024. According to CNBC, Musk's AI business is aiming for a valuation of around $50 billion, double its valuation six months ago.

The new capital will be used to support the research and development of xAI's generative AI model, Grok, and to expand its infrastructure, the team said in the release.

Since its Series B funding in May 2024, xAI has launched several major initiatives, including Colossus, which it describes as “the world's largest AI supercomputer,” Grok 2, and the xAI API for developers.

The company also introduced Aurora, its proprietary image generation module, and integrated Grok with the X platform to provide real-time information processing capabilities.

xAI is currently training Grok 3, which they call their “most powerful model yet.” The company aims to match or even surpass OpenAI's GPT-5, focusing on increasing its capabilities in natural language understanding, image generation, and coding tasks.

Musk expects Grok 3 to be launched by the end of this year. After its release, xAI plans to expand its infrastructure to include 200,000 GPUs, with the ability to scale up to up to 300,000 GPUs in the future.