--- title: "Venture Capital Firms Are Actually Considering Giving Elon Musk $6 Billion For xAI" description: "At least one big Silicon Valley VC firm is considering a $6 billion cash infusion for Elon Musk's xAI startup and its chatbot, Grok." date: "2024-04-26" modified: "2024-04-26" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/vc-firms-elon-musk-xai-fundraising" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "The Industrialists" - "xAI" tags: - "elon musk" - "grok" - "the digest" - "xai" --- # Venture Capital Firms Are Actually Considering Giving Elon Musk $6 Billion For xAI ![At least one big Silicon Valley VC firm is considering a $6 billion cash infusion for Elon Musk's xAI startup and its chatbot, Grok.]() *\Image: Steve Granitz / FilmMagic via Getty / Futurism\* ## Check, Please At least one big Silicon Valley venture capital firm is considering a $6 billion cash infusion for Elon Musk's xAI startup and its troubled chatbot, Grok. As people close to the fundraising [told *The Information*](), Musk is closing in on a first-round fundraising deal with potential investors including Sequoia Capital, which invested $800 million into Twitter when he bought it back in 2022. The insiders did not specify how much Sequoia plans to commit or which other firms might be involved in the fundraising, but the [*Financial Times*]() and [*Bloomberg*]() have also confirmed that Sequoia is committed, with the *FT* reporting that Musk invited the companies to get in on the ground floor before others start investing. The deal, as *Bloomberg* notes, would bring xAI's valuation up to $18 billion, which is not much less than that of Anthropic, another OpenAI rival created by exiles from the company that's valued at around [$18.4 billion]() following its third round of fundraising earlier this year. ## Copy Cat As Musk seeks to build out his OpenAI competitor, he has also made comments mimicking his *other* rival's attempts to enter the AI space. Earlier in April, he remarked [during an X Spaces talk]() that training out Grok would require 100,000 of Nvidia's H100 data processing GPUs, which at $40,000 per chip are considered the gold standard in AI compute power. While that number is less than a third of the 350,000 chips Meta founder and CEO Mark [Zuckerberg said in January]() that he needs for his company's own [AI projects](), it's still indicative of his intentions. As VCs seemingly salivate at the chance of big returns on their Musk investments, it's hard to see this news as anything but Silicon Valley types trying to ride the AI wave on a surfboard with massive holes in it. If they were savvier, Sequoia and whoever else is planning to spend big on xAI would look at what the startup has actually put out so far, which has [often]() [been]() very [shoddy]() and [hilariously bad]() at following its founder's "[anti-woke]()" mission. They'd also be well-served to look at what's going on at Musk's other companies too, where [execs are fleeing]() and longtime investors are [starting to freak out]() as the multi-hyphenate's [reputation]() and [rhetoric]() precedes him. Let's just leave you with this moment of zen: [xAI's Grok cluelessly claiming that]() the "asylum where they raised me" meme is real. **More on Musk companies:** [*A Tesla Vice President Just Quit and Sold $181 Million of Its Stock*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()