Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup could receive a major boost as xAI races to catch up with rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic in a competitive field.
Investors close to the CEOs of Tesla and SpaceX are in talks for xAI to raise $3 billion in a funding round that could be valued at $18 billion, the people said. wall street journalSteve Jurvetson and venture capital firm Gigafund may be potential backers, according to .
Mr. Jurvetson is a friend of Mr. Musk and serves on the board of SpaceX and previously served on the board of Tesla. Meanwhile, Gigafund co-founder Luke Nosek is also a member of SpaceX’s board of directors and, along with Musk, a member of the so-called “PayPal mafia,” the newspaper reported. journal.
A representative for xAI did not immediately respond. luckdid not respond to a request for comment Saturday. journalFriday night request.
Musk launched xAI last year as a rival to ChatGPT’s parent company, OpenAI. He was a co-founder, but he later filed a lawsuit claiming that the company had abandoned its original nonprofit mission. xAI launched his own chatbot, named Grok, in November and released an updated version last month.
News of a potential $3 billion funding round comes as rival OpenAI has been promised $13 billion in funding from Microsoft, while Anthropic has raised $6 billion, including from backers Google and Amazon. It’s the latest sign that xAI is seeking more funding.
In January, financial times It was reported that Musk was looking to raise up to $6 billion for xAI, but he later announced that was denied He said he was doing a fundraiser. And in December, regulatory filings revealed that xAI was seeking to raise $1 billion from investors and had already secured nearly $135 million.
At the same time as competition for investor support intensifies in the artificial intelligence space, xAI and its rivals are also competing for AI talent. After news broke on Wednesday that Tesla’s Ethan Knight had joined xAI as the automaker’s fourth engineer, Musk tweeted that Knight was planning to defect to OpenAI.
“It was either xAI or them.” Mr Musk wrotenote that he was also boost AI engineer salary. “[OpenAI has] They are actively recruiting Tesla engineers by offering huge rewards. [has] Unfortunately, in some cases it was successful. ”
He later added, “The talent war over AI is the craziest talent war I’ve ever seen!”
Tech companies are scrambling to secure limited talent with advanced AI experience. In fact, he may be one of only 200 people in the world with high-level qualifications for training large-scale language models and troubleshooting new AI platforms, he said, as head of generative AI at Databricks. said Naveen Rao. wall street journal last month.
Acquiring and retaining these in-demand skills is costly. The median salary at OpenAI is $925,000, including bonuses and company capital, according to data from career services platform Levels.fyi.
These high paychecks come as a result of a March report from McKinsey, which found that about 51% of artificial intelligence developers and heavy users said they planned to quit within the next three to six months. It was revealed that 34% of respondents said they were planning a vacation. within the same period.
At least three high-level AI employees have left Facebook’s parent company, Meta, in the past few weeks. That included computer scientist and senior director of engineering Eric Meyer, who said: luck In an exclusive interview, he said he turned down “great offers” from some of the “most sought after” AI companies.
To prevent such brainpower from taking over, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has even reportedly begun using personal appeals to persuade top AI engineers and researchers.
This article originally appeared on Fortune.com
