Prince Alwaleed part of Elon Musk’s $6bn AI funding round

Reuters

• xAI secures $6bn funding
• Led by Kingdom Holding
• Prince Alwaleed invested $1.9bn

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI has secured $6 billion in a series B funding round led by investors including Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and his investment firm Kingdom Holding Company.

The round, which also included investments from Dubai-based Vy Capital and US companies Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, will assist the commercial launch of xAI’s products, the company said in a blog post on Monday.

Kingdom Holding Company did not respond when contacted by AGBI.

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The newly raised funds “will be used to take xAI’s first products to market, build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate the research and development of future technologies,” the post added.

xAI is currently valued at $24 billion, up from its pre-funding valuation of $18 billion. 

Musk, the owner of social media platform X (formerly Twitter), has hinted at forthcoming announcements and more updates in the coming weeks.

Kingdom Holding, along with Prince Alwaleed, already has substantial investments in X. 

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Prince Alwaleed made it known through a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that he had invested $1.9 billion. This made him the second-largest shareholder in the social media company after Musk.

Kingdom Holding’s engagement with the social media platform dates back to an initial share purchase in 2011, with a significant increase in holdings by October 2015.

Musk launched xAI in July last year and in November released its Grok-1 generative AI platform.

Musk is also planning to build an xAI supercomputer according to American publication The Information, which he has been calling a “gigafactory of compute”.