"xAI Founded by Musk, 'OpenAI Out' Raises 8 Trillion Won Investment... Valued at 33 Trillion Won"

Japan's SoftBank Plans 12 Trillion Won Investment in AI
'AI Arms Race' Heats Up

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has founded the artificial intelligence (AI) startup xAI, which has raised $6 billion (approximately 8.2 trillion KRW) in funding. With this investment, the company aims to join the ranks of AI leaders like OpenAI, intensifying the 'AI arms race' among U.S. tech companies.

On the 27th (local time), according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and Bloomberg News, xAI announced the funding and stated, "This capital will be used to launch xAI's first product to the market, build advanced infrastructure, and accelerate research and development of future technologies."

The funding round for xAI included participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Fidelity Management & Research, and Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holdings. xAI's valuation also rose from the previous $18 billion (approximately 24.5 trillion KRW) to $24 billion (approximately 32.7 trillion KRW).

xAI is an AI company founded by Musk in July last year. After co-founding OpenAI with Sam Altman in 2015 and leaving the company due to management disputes, Musk established a new AI company following the surge of ChatGPT at the end of 2022. xAI launched its asset chatbot service 'Grok' in November last year, just four months after its founding, and released the latest AI model 'Grok 1.5' earlier this year. Notably, xAI is training its AI models by accessing posts on the social networking service X (formerly Twitter), which Musk owns.

Musk announced on X that "more announcements will be made in the coming weeks."

This large-scale funding round for xAI is seen as a reflection of the intensifying AI arms race in Silicon Valley. AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic are securing massive funding from big tech firms like Microsoft (MS) and Google Alphabet to develop AI technologies, including large language model (LLM) training.

Meanwhile, Japan's SoftBank has announced plans to invest $9 billion (approximately 12.3 trillion KRW) in the AI sector over the next year.

SoftBank Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Yoshimitsu Goto recently stated in an interview with foreign media, "In principle, we will maintain the same pace of investment activities as last year," adding, "From now on, we want to expand investments in AI companies."

Following SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son's announcement of a major AI investment in June last year, the company has poured $8.9 billion (approximately 12.1 trillion KRW) into the AI sector over the past year. SoftBank plans to maintain or even increase its AI investment scale.