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Elon Musk’s xAI has raised more than $11 billion in record time

The tangled web of AI startups and their investors is throwing up conflicts — some old, some new.

12/4/24 11:03AM

Elon Musk making the news is almost routine post-election, but, even for Elon, this week’s headlines are full of some staggering figures: His $100+ billion Tesla pay package was struck down, SpaceX is reportedly nearing a $350 billion valuation, and his feud with OpenAI — the nonprofit he co-founded — has escalated, again.

Forsaking all others

Last Friday, Musk filed an injunction to halt OpenAI’s for-profit transition, accusing it of orchestrating a “group boycott” that blocked funding for his own AI venture, xAI. In October, the Financial Times reported that OpenAI had discouraged investors from backing rival AI startups during its latest funding round.

But, even if Sam Altman and co. have been forcing investors to commit to monogamy and invest only in OpenAI, you wouldn’t exactly say xAI has struggled to find backers.

In just 16 months since its July 2023 launch, xAI has raised ~$11 billion — a milestone that took OpenAI around eight years and the Amazon-backed Anthropic nearly four years to achieve. Indeed, xAI’s latest funding round catapulted its valuation to $50 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. That surpasses Anthropic’s $19 billion valuation and the valuations of public heavyweights like Ford ($43 billion), Kroger ($43 billion), and Lululemon ($42 billion). It’s also more than the $44 billion Musk paid for X just two years ago.

Why the scramble for cash?

In 2024, if you want to compete in AI, you need to be willing to pour billions into physical stuff — AI chips and data centers: xAI’s latest $5 billion will partially fund the purchase of 100,000 Nvidia chips for its recently completed data center in Memphis. Meanwhile, Anthropic is on track to build one of the world's largest AI supercomputers, and OpenAI is expanding its footprint across the US Midwest and Southwest.

According to McKinsey & Company’s October research, demand for AI-specific data centers is projected to grow 33% annually through 2030, and could eventually account for 70% of global data center demand. TL;DR: AI is an expensive game, and xAI is leaning hard on Musk’s name to compete.

Rani Molla

Meta posts an earnings and revenue beat — and a huge capex bill

The social media giant reported earnings after the bell Wednesday.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg visits U.S. Capitol for Senate meetings

Rani Molla, Nate Becker

Alphabet jumps as Q1 earnings and revenue blow past expectations

The search giant also boosted its capex forecast for the year and said it expects 2027 capex to be “significantly” higher than 2026.

Rani Molla10h

SpaceX filings reportedly show no one can fire Elon Musk except Elon Musk

The only thing stopping Elon Musk from being chairman and CEO of SpaceX is Elon Musk, according to Reuters, which viewed an excerpt of the company’s IPO filing.

The document outlines a dual-class share structure giving Musk control via super-voting stock. The filing says he “can only be removed from our board or these positions by the vote of Class B holders” — shares he’ll control after the listing. It adds that if he keeps those shares, he could “continue to control the election and removal of a majority of our board.”

At a typical public company — even founder-led ones with dual-class structures — a CEO can be fired by the board of directors, which represents shareholders and can vote to remove them over issues such as corporate performance, strategy, or misconduct.

The unusual SpaceX setup means Musk is unlikely to face the kind of CEO succession pressure he’s dealt with at Tesla. Musk, of course, is not a typical CEO, and the value of his companies has long been closely tied to his presence.

To be sure, SpaceX’s confidential IPO filing isn’t in its final form yet — while the filing is still in the confidential phase, the company will be going back and forth with the SEC, which will review it and suggest or require changes.

Exclusive: Only Elon Musk can fire Elon Musk from SpaceX, filing shows

Rani Molla4/28/26

OpenAI’s models are officially coming to Amazon

Amazon is finally getting in on the hottest ticket in tech.

After Microsoft announced yesterday that it has agreed to give up its exclusive rights to sell OpenAI’s models, Amazon, as expected, will start offering them to customers — something Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman says users have been asking for “for a really long time.” Some models are available now in preview, and the most powerful GPT versions will show up “in the coming weeks.”

This is a big shift in the AI cloud wars. Microsoft’s early bet on OpenAI gave Azure an edge by locking up the most in-demand models. Now that exclusivity is gone, Amazon and other competitors can finally offer them too, closing a key gap and competing more directly for AI customers.

Amazon Set to Sell OpenAI Tech After Microsoft Cedes Exclusivity

Claire Yubin Oh4/28/26

Ship-tracking app surges as Iran war continues

As Middle East peace talks stretch on, with Tehran reportedly offering to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if the US lifts its blockade and the war ends, the owner of shipping intelligence platform MarineTraffic revealed that the app has gained millions of new users since the conflict began.

MarineTraffic’s user count jumped to 8.5 million this April, up from 3.5 million a year ago, the cofounder of its parent company, Kpler, said in an interview with the Financial Times. Paid subscribers, often workers within companies and governments looking for more data on supply chains and commodities trading, rose 11,000 in the same period.

Kpler, which also owns shipping intelligence platform FleetMon, draws its data from a range of sources, including the Automatic Identification System, satellites, and more than 500 people on-site, like port terminal operators.

Per Appfigures data, MarineTraffic is estimated to have raked in almost $1 million across March and April in app revenue (through April 27), more than double the ~$346,500 from the same months last year. Across the full year, Kpler expects to earn between $300 million and $400 million in annual recurring revenues.