xAI, Elon Musk’s AI startup has raised $6 billion in Series B funding after poaching investors from leading VC firms as well as Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding. The round of funding is a major boost for xAI as the company looks to catch up with market innovators such as OpenAI which has used its AI software to change things around the globe.
However, Musk got involved in a X/Twitter spat with Yann LeCun, the head of AI at Meta, arguably the most respected computer scientist and widely regarded as one of the three “AI godfathers”. The two tech moguls engaged in a war of words on X with LeCun taking a dig at Musk’s management style and the billionaire counter attacking by asking what significant scientific achievements has LeCun made over the last few years.
LeCun heads up Meta’s artificial intelligence division and is also a professor at New York University. He has butted heads with Musk before, dismissing his outlook for the future of AI in March. Now, he’s poaching AI researchers to join xAI according to the funding announcement.
LeCun was purportedly unphased by the spat on X, even inviting Musk to a sailing race instead of the cage fight proposed by the Tesla CEO to Mark Zuckerberg.
Now that xAI is up and running, the infrastructure and support for ambitious lines of research and development will be financed by what currently stands at $6 billion in raised funds, but could grow significantly in the not too distant future.
