XAI Valuation Reaches Over $40 Billion After $6 Billion Funding Round
Elon Musk’s xAI announced Monday it raised $6 billion in a Series C funding round, putting the company’s value at more than $40 billion as it continues to strengthen its AI products and infrastructure
The company closed the $6 billion round and said the funding would be allocated toward products and infrastructure, likely referring to its Grok AI model and the multibillion-dollar supercomputer site in Memphis, Tennessee, used to train its AI.
Investors included Blackrock, A16Z, Saudi conglomerate holding company Kingdom Holding, Fidelity and Sequoia Capital, the latter three of which participated in xAI’s $6 billion Series B funding round in May.
$12 billion. That is how much money xAI has raised this year from their Series B and Series C funding rounds, which included investors such as Morgan Stanley, Kingdom Holding, Andreessen Horowitz, chip designer Nvidia and semiconductor firm AMD.
xAI has spent 2024 building its AI language models and the supercomputer used to train them. The computer, dubbed “Colossus,” features 100,000 Nvidia graphics processing units used to train AI and will eventually be doubled in size, allowing it to take on a significantly high training workload.
The latest funding round puts xAI’s valuation over $40 billion at least, as multiple reports have placed the value of Musk’s company at $40 billion or $50 billion. xAI said in its funding announcement it is training Grok 3, which is not yet available and was slated for release by the end of the year, according to a tweet from Musk in June.
More about xAI’s fundraising efforts on Forbes
Building AI Apps With Palmyra Creative
Discover Palmyra Creative, the latest large language model from Writer, designed to elevate your creative workflows and spark innovation. Whether you’re a sales manager brainstorming fresh ideas or a financial analyst polishing reports, Palmyra Creative is here to help you think outside the box and add that extra flair. In this video, Andrew Miller demonstrates:
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Majority Of Enterprises Still In The Pilot Stages Of AI, Says MIT
If you worry that your organization is falling behind in its artificial intelligence initiatives, don’t feel so bad — just about everyone is still in the learning and piloting stages. And if it’s unclear whether there will be return on investment at the end of all this work, there is financial advantage as well, research out of MIT finds.
There are at least four logical stages in AI advancement, and most enterprises are still working through the experimental and pilot stages, an analysis of 721 companies by the MIT Center for Information System Research (CISR) concludes. As AI proceeds, there is now evidence that overall financial performance advances as well.
Most enterprises in the survey were in the first two stages of AI maturity and had financial performance below the industry average, according to the report’s authors, led by Peter Weill and Stephanie Woerner, both with MIT. Enterprises in stages three and four, on the other hand, had financial performance well above industry average — exceeding 10 percentage points.
More on Weill and Woerner’s four stages of AI progress on Forbes
Data Governance Vs. Model Governance: Building A Strong Foundation For AI
Data governance and model governance are the keys in building a strong foundation for AI success. Together, they provide a solid foundation for making better decisions with data & ensuring your AI model is reliable, transparent, and performs as intended.
Join Michael Dobson and Anisa Asa as they explore the importance of governance in AI and provide you with the knowledge and insights you need to unlock your AI's full potential.
I’ve partnered with AI provider Logictry to evangelize their platform that helps leaders make smarter decisions faster. Here’s a case study with National Instruments.
This is just one of the many use cases for the Logictry AI platform, contact me for more information about how you can utilize Logictry in your business organization.
Idris Elba Is ServiceNow’s AI Executive
During his prolific acting career, Idris Elba has played a homicide detective, a drug lord, an all-seeing Marvel superhero, and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela. But the British actor, who also runs a production company and has cofounded a creative agency and a skincare line, appears particularly at ease playing a CEO in a new marketing campaign for ServiceNow, the cloud-based software company.
A new commercial, debuting on Christmas Day, features Elba as a fictional chief executive walking through his company, highlighting all the different ways ServiceNow’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology is supporting employees in human resources, IT, and customer service. The campaign is the latest product to come out of a partnership Elba has forged with the tech company and CEO Bill McDermott, which also includes a commitment to work together to bring energy and clean water resources to Sherbro Island off the coast of Sierra Leone.
FROM INTRODUCTION TO ACTION
In an interview with Modern CEO, Elba underscored that he’s not merely a spokesperson for the product. “When the [ServiceNow] team came to my offices, I said, ‘I need to use the product,’” he recalls. “I have a small workforce across various different verticals. And I needed to understand the product so that I can be a part of a genuine partnership. So, I’m integrating it into IE7 and the Akuna Group, which are my parent companies, so that when I’m in these commercials I have a much better sense of what I’m saying and why I’m saying it.”
More about ServiceNow’s partnership with Idris Elba on FastCompany
Mark Heaps, Groq | theCUBE + NYSE Wired Media Week AI Innovators Summit
SiliconANGLE Media Inc. Co-Founder and Co-CEO John Furrier hosts Mark Heaps, Chief Tech Evangelist at Groq ,as part of theCUBE + NYSE Wired presentation of Media Week - Cyber & AI Innovators Summit from the New York Stock Exchange.
Microsoft Works To Add Non-OpenAI Models Into 365 Copilot Products
Microsoft has been working on adding internal and third-party artificial intelligence models to power its flagship AI product Microsoft 365 Copilot, in a bid to diversify from the current underlying technology from OpenAI and reduce costs, sources familiar with the effort told Reuters.
It is the latest effort by Microsoft, which is a major backer of OpenAI, to lessen its dependence on the AI startup - a departure from recent years when Microsoft touted its early access to OpenAI's models. When Microsoft announced 365 Copilot in March 2023, a major selling point was that it used OpenAI's GPT-4 model.
Microsoft is also seeking to reduce 365 Copilot's reliance on OpenAI due to concerns about cost and speed for enterprise users, according to the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private matters.
A Microsoft spokesperson said OpenAI continues as the company's partner on frontier models, a term for the most advanced AI models available. The original agreement between the two companies allows the software giant to customize OpenAI’s models. "We incorporate various models from OpenAI and Microsoft depending on the product and experience," Microsoft said in a statement. OpenAI declined to comment.
More on Microsoft and OpenAI open relationship on Yahoo Finance
Coda And Grammarly's AI Agent Future
Coda co-founder and CEO Shishir Mehrotra discusses the company's merger with Grammarly as they focus on bringing productivity and agents to users. He joins Caroline Hyde on "Bloomberg Technology" to discuss.
Thats all for today, however new advancements, investments, and partnerships are happening as you read this. AI is moving fast, subscribe today. Happy Holidays!