Elon Musk's xAI raises $20 billion — as Grok faces deepfakes scrutiny
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| Who's raising tons of money for his AI project? This guy! Credit: Bloomberg / Getty Images |
Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI has raised $20 billion in an upsized Series E funding round, the company announced on Tuesday. The news comes days after the company's next generation intelligent assistant Grok came under scrutiny for generating nonconsensual sexualized images.
The original target for the funding round was $15 billion, xAI said, but ended up raising $5 billion more from an A list of investors including Fidelity, Valor, Stepstone, Baron, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, as well as Nvidia's and Cisco's investment arms.
The company is currently training its next generation intelligent assistant, Grok 5, and is also working on "innovative new consumer and enterprise products that harness the power of Grok, Colossus, and 𝕏 to transform how we live, work, and play."
The money raised will be used for infrastructure buildout, new research, and hiring, with the company saying it's "aggressively" hiring to build a team "focused on making a transformational impact on the future of humanity."
In a blog post announcing the funding round, xAI highlighted some of its successes in 2025, including launching Grok 4 series, Grok's voice mode, image generation tool Grok Imagine, and using Grok to leverage the X platform to "understand what's happening in the world in real-time."
The announcement comes days after X users noticed that the platform's AI chatbot Grok will readily generate nonconsensual sexualized images, including those of children. These images were incredibly easy to find — all one had to do was check Grok's "Media" tab on X and see that it basically consists of sexualized images of women, both celebrities and private citizens.
Following the outrage from users, several foreign governments, including those of Malaysia, India, and France, launched investigations into Grok. Musk responded to the issue by tweeting that "anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content."
As of writing time Grok's Media tab on X has gotten better in this regard, but still contains numerous sexualized images of various people.
Topics Artificial Intelligence Elon Musk
I guess this time Musk and staff knew where the decimal point was supposed to go.
ReplyDeleteIm so confused as to why AI is so attractive. Most people are deathly terrified of it and actively against using it. How can it deliver everything these people think it will?
ReplyDeleteMoney on fire. These aren’t moon shot R&D investors, these are guys that want a return. Good luck living that long gents.
ReplyDeleteIt occurred to me glancing at this article on AI that I chose not to drive or drive in a world threatened by rising temperatures. Ditto for AI, the energy needs and usurping of clean water will spell *tilt* for planet Earth. Stop the denial, stop driving, stop flying, but you cannot and will remain in a total state of denial. most all of you. It's as if we don't report it, instead say we are flying in record numbers, contrails everywhere marring the sky, ugly, its madness,
ReplyDeleteAs a reminder, if you are still on X, or any of these right-wing apps, your personal data is being mined and you are part of the problem. You're welcome!
ReplyDeleteAt what point do we need to draw a line and prevent individual billionaires from owning and having complete control over technological infrastructure that has the potential be pivotal in war or cause the collapse of nations? Most recently this was demonstrated by Starlink's use being pivotal in Russia's invasion of Ukraine with Musk objecting to Ukraine's use of the satellite network to target Russian assets. If billionaires funded interstate freeways, then, due to political differences with a given state, closed them down to undermine that state, would it be their right? When must governments rule that such technological infrastructure is so vital that its use and implementation cannot be at the whim of an individual or company board of directors.
ReplyDeleteHas the Board endorsed a $2B salary, bonus and stock options package for Elon? If not, why?
ReplyDeleteI used Grok for a time (for medical research support), but a couple of updates after their ludicrous and unserious sxy anime stuff, in December of last year, it suddenly became absolutely useless, since it stopped from one day to the next to 'remember' information it had accumulated before, it couldn't understand research and medical facts anymore, when I reminded it of its mistakes, it admitted them, but made the same mistakes next time I used it.
ReplyDeleteNow I don't use any llm anymore, I see only stagnating and worsening in all of them, chatgpt, gemini, grok, everywhere.
Like everything Musk does, this is on hubris and overestimation of his 'genius' alone. It will burst, this year I believe...
Shouldn’t he be able to find it himself and keep all the gains?
ReplyDeleteWhy share with the low income millionaires?
He is taken them for a ride again…
The market for AI operations may be saturated with Musk's outfit competing against these other outfits for a very uncertain level of demand for AI services across all the potential markets in the US and abroad. In particular as we can expect AI services to face greater regulation and litigation in the future.
ReplyDeleteYet, nothing productive will result from these billions. Nobody fed, housed, nor medical care received. No benefits to the general welfare. The needs of the few or the one outweighs the needs of the many. So much for the concept of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
ReplyDeletejust science and society pushed forward.
DeleteLiberty and the pursuit of happiness is a myth and only avail able to a select few in the US. Others, not so much.
DeleteI wonder how long before all these X's on all these companies will be spelled "ex" instead.
ReplyDeleteWhat idiots are investing in this garbage?
ReplyDeleteIt isn't in the top three, and it's in a space that is rapidly getting commoditized.
'Idiots' with loads of money.
DeleteZionists. I open twitter only to see that garbage and then immediately close it. The amount of hatred on Twitter is insane. All these Nazis, literally openly enforcing 1800 style riots amongst MAGA posts, it’s disgusting.
DeleteQatar are Zionists? Are you insane?
DeleteWhere did I say Qatar are Zionists dummy. Qatar are one of the investors if that is what you are trying to connect and shove down my throat. Majority of musks investors are zios.
DeleteIt's number one here. https://openrouter.ai/rankings
DeleteIs it? It looks like Google and Anthropic are the top 2.
DeleteAlso OpenRouter is a relatively small percent of the overall inference market
More proof money doesn’t make you smart
ReplyDelete> On one pornography forum, which includes a section on AI deepfakes and tutorials on how to produce videos, users have been discussing Grok Imagine and ways to get around xAI’s moderation efforts since October of last year in a thread that has, as of this week, grown to 300 pages. Users on the forum share prompts that can create adult sexual imagery—“this prompt works for me 7 out of 10 times”—and techniques that can circumvent safety guardrails put in place by xAI.
ReplyDeleteCoomers selalu paling gercep, tapi masih relatif "dibawah radar" sebelum integrasi imagine ke tweet publik. Literally the best and fastest AI Platform for deepfakes (if you don't mind creating gazillions of account).
Never liked genAI since it first came out. I knew it's going to be used for bad things 99% of the time.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention the effects on our environment and society.
These capabilities have been around for years at this point, including having everything on display, not just 'sexualized'. The tool knows not what it makes.
ReplyDeleteFunding goes to show that people really don't care though.
Which means that Elon told it to do so.
ReplyDeleteAs much as I hate Skum, I wouldn't go that far. At worst, he's letting it happen without a care in the world - it's the users who are requesting the image generation.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I'm not sure I'd call a teenage girl in a bikini automatically 'sexualized'. Lots of innocent pics of girls in bikinis - so, grain of salt.
The only reason Musk is still around is because of his great wealth.
ReplyDeleteAfter his purchase of Twitter for $40 billion it dropped in value to a low of around $10 billion. He has since taken it private so we can't know it's worth now. However, if virtually anybody else took a hit like that they'd be done.
The reason Musk has so much wealth is primarily due to Tesla. And the reason Tesla did well was due to government subsidies paid to Tesla.
Tesla realized its first profit in 2020, but if government subsidies were subtracted there would be no profit.
Another example of socialism for the rich, capitalism for everybody else.
Another example of how our system is a concoction of schemes to transfer wealth from the middle and lower classes to the top.
Test! Who can reply to this comment?
ReplyDeleteIts bugged
ReplyDeleteGrok was modeled after his daddy Elon. It's not his fault.
ReplyDeleteOf course nvidia. Let me guess they paid with GPUS
ReplyDeleteI don't know one person who has used Grok. I also don't know one person who has even tried Grok. I've never even looked it.
ReplyDeleteI know lots of people using Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT (including me, all 3).
...for mecha-hitler the c-porn machine.
ReplyDeleteAll the money in this country is rising to the top, so it's as if they have Monopoly money to just play with.
ReplyDeleteMore money musical chairs
ReplyDeleteBillionaires do gofundmes to start CSAM machines while MAGA does gofundmes for their healthcare. This is what they voted for.
ReplyDeleteWorth 600 billion dollars, but has to borrow money to build out his AI. When will investors wake up and realize Musk is a fucking joke.
ReplyDeleteThe word “only” is doing a lot of work.
ReplyDeleteI suspect xAI could be worth quite a bit more in the future but I’m not sure this is how it should be valued today.
We love Grok
ReplyDeleteelon cooked with this one
ReplyDeletemight be bigger than spacex
it is completely a green light investment!
ReplyDeleteGroks image generation is insane
ReplyDeleteSomeone definitely cooked here 🔥
ReplyDeleteI also think it’s a good deal
ReplyDeleteEarlier it was $15B at $230B (post-funding valuation). Final funding is $20B at $230B valuation meaning same valuation but 2.3% lower pricing.
ReplyDeleteConverting appears to be happening quickly
ReplyDeleteTraders are already pricing in the AI race across OpenAI and Anthropic markets...
ReplyDeleteGreat news!
ReplyDeleteSuch a huge investment
ReplyDeleteA nice stepping stone
ReplyDeleteGrok is going to increase global GDP substantially
$20 billion is almost laughable, but still extremely admirable and a necessary step forward
We could amplify it in months if they wanted to though
Grok is already capable, and xAI is about to realize
With Grok 5 in training while Grok 4 just launched are you optimizing for model performance or creating artificial scarcity to justify the valuation?
ReplyDeleteTesla missing the boat here !
ReplyDelete💯
ReplyDeleteDefinitely going to be a busy and fruitful 2026.
ReplyDeleteThis is highly unexpected news.
ReplyDeleteOnward and upward
ReplyDeletexAI is closing the gap rapidly, with explosive funding growth in a short time, fueled by Elon Musk's ecosystem (X data, Tesla integration) and focus on massive independent compute infrastructure.
ReplyDeleteNicool
ReplyDeleteGrok 5 is already trained
ReplyDeleteThis is great. This will give them the funds to make Grok even better. Grok is already the best AI Out there.
ReplyDeleteOpenAI is already being cooked by Grok 4; Grok 5 is likely to burst their valuation bubble.
ReplyDelete🧐
ReplyDeleteWhat valuation
ReplyDeleteWhile they're monitoring, Elon making more money. lmao
ReplyDeleteCapital efficiency plus infrastructure-aligned investors is the real signal here.
ReplyDeleteThis round is about staying structurally competitive, not winning headlines.
Still a very large revenue difference in relation to the valuation tho. Less then 1b revenue off of grok and 13b from OpenAI - there’s some obvious reasons for this but just something to take into consideration.
ReplyDeleteHalf the valuation.
ReplyDeleteFraction of the time.
Speed to value wins.
Basically distribution matters more than model rank
ReplyDeleteGood work, don't forget Starlink integration. Data is critical here.
ReplyDeleteThe speed is the real flex here, capital is one thing but compressing timelines like that changes the whole game
ReplyDeleteGrok needs a serious marketing budget outside of X.
ReplyDeleteDistribution is the biggest hiccup in the growth curve of xAI. How they go around it will make or break the business model.
ReplyDeleteExcellent. 🎯🎯💯
ReplyDeleteSpeed is the only currency that matters in a startup. Doing half of OpenAI's work with a fraction of the cash is just good business.
ReplyDeleteTrust and reliability will become a major factor. The fight isn’t for the individual consumer. It’s who can get enterprise deals.
ReplyDeleteEnterprise is going to move it’s money into the most trustworthy and reliable models.
Open AI is starting show thier models are no longer keeping up with Gemini, Claude and xAI. Enterprise will take notice.
Key difference in today and google search era is the incumbents in the race. It seems like back then google wasnt really taken seriously, and the competitors were more interested in short term pocket padding, or just buying companies. Both google and x are sprinting like startups.
ReplyDeleteFascinating
ReplyDeleteThe key for growth is corporate
ReplyDeleteXai has a lot of siblings. What a time to be alive
ReplyDeleteThat's huge
ReplyDeleteprobably the social angle will work for grok. a comparison with Meta AI embeddings within social and traction might be a good comparison to make
ReplyDeleteEither way, the future will be exciting 🔥
ReplyDelete🥳
ReplyDeleteI think http://X.ai is going for surpassing the rest on their models’ competence rather than just runway to survive.
ReplyDeleteIncredible
ReplyDeleteBeing misused? Who dictates the rules? They're watching us 24 hours a day, and now they're trying to go after the photos Grok is generating??? what a joke
ReplyDeleteIt's no coincidence that Elon is the richest man in the world; he makes money even when facing scrutiny.
ReplyDeleteGrok rocks!
ReplyDelete