Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has secured $500 million in commitments from investors toward a $1 billion goal, Bloomberg reported Saturday.
The company is discussing a valuation of $15 billion to $20 billion, though terms could still change in the coming weeks, but Musk said on X, the network formerly called Twitter, that the report was “fake news.”
Musk launched the startup last year as an alternative to Open AI, which he co-founded and later left over differences about how to profit from the technology. xAI’s product, a chatbot named Grok, is developed using social media posts on X, which Musk also owns.
The two companies’ investors will likely overlap too, Bloomberg reported. Those who backed Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter include Larry Ellison, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity Management & Research Co. and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.
Musk said in November that equity investors in X will own 25% of xAI. Musk and investors are expected to finalize terms in the next couple weeks.
“This is simply not accurate,” Musk said in a reply to a user post about the Bloomberg article on social media platform X, Reuters reported.
Last December, Musk said his artificial intelligence company was not raising funds, a day after the startup filed with the U.S. securities regulator to raise up to $1 billion in an equity offering.
Musk launched xAI in July last year in response to Big Tech’s AI efforts, which he has criticized for excessive censorship and a lack of adequate safety measures.
This story originally appeared on Marketwatch
