AI startup xAI founded by Musk announced on Monday (23rd) that it has completed a $6 billion Series C financing and disclosed some of the investors.
xAI's official blog post stated: xAI is accelerating progress at an unprecedented speed. We have completed a $6 billion Series C financing, with major investors including A16Z, Blackrock, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Kingdom Holdings, Lightspeed, MGX, Morgan Stanley, OIA, QIA, Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners, and Vy Capital. In addition, strategic investors NVIDIA and AMD also participated in the investment and will continue to support xAI in rapidly expanding its infrastructure scale.
The roles of AMD and NVIDIA in this financing expose the complex relationship between chip manufacturers and their customers.
AMD and NVIDIA are directly funding a competitor to their main customers (Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon).For these chip companies, maintaining flexibility in choices is a wise move. By maintaining close ties with Musk and xAI, AMD and NVIDIA will continue to have stable buyers even as other customers increasingly rely on custom chips.
xAI is currently not the main player in AI service providers. According to The Wall Street Journal, the new startup recently announced that its annual...