Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Musk’s xAI Secures $6 Billion to Acquire 100,000 GPUs for AI Advancement

Transcript

Musk’s xAI Secures $6 Billion to Acquire 100,000 GPUs for AI Advancement · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:01
  Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk
• 0:04
  Podcast. This is a show where we discuss
• 0:07
  the critical crossroads that shape SpaceX, Tesla X, The
• 0:11
  Boring Company and Neuralink. I'm your host, Will Walden.
• 0:16
  Elon Musk's AI company XAI is set to raise $6 billion in his
• 0:22
  latest funding round. Now, this financial boost is
• 0:24
  aimed at advancing research and development amid strong
• 0:27
  competition in the AI sector, particularly facing Open AI,
• 0:33
  which Musk was a Co founder of but left years later.
• 0:37
  Now, investors participating in the Series B funding round
• 0:39
  include prominent venture capital firms such as Anderson
• 0:42
  Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners, VI Capital, and
• 0:48
  Fidelity Management and Research.
• 0:50
  Additionally, Saudi Prince Alba, Lead Bintalal and Kingdom
• 0:55
  Holding are among the backers as announced on XA is website and
• 1:00
  according to Elon, XA is valuation before this funding
• 1:03
  round was $18 billion. This new infusion of 6 billion
• 1:08
  will elevate the startups evaluation to $24 billion.
• 1:12
  The funds are intended to help XAI bring its initial products
• 1:15
  to market, construct advanced infrastructure, and speed up the
• 1:18
  development of future technologies.
• 1:21
  Now, this funding marks a significant step in the
• 1:23
  escalating AI competition, where leading startups have been
• 1:27
  raising substantial amounts to support the computational
• 1:29
  demands required for training large language models.
• 1:33
  Now, these models form the backbone of generative AI tech
• 1:36
  such as Open AI. Is ChatGPT.
• 1:39
  Now? Open AI, who's the creator of
• 1:41
  ChatGPT, has secured $13 billion in funding for Microsoft.
• 1:45
  Another competitor, Anthropic, has raised over $6 billion.
• 1:49
  In this context, Musk's X AI is attempting to catch up, having
• 1:53
  been publicly launched in July of the previous year.
• 1:57
  But some investors have expressed skepticism about XAIS
• 2:00
  ability to compete given its late start.
• 2:03
  And despite these concerns, X AI launched his chatbot Grok in
• 2:07
  November, making it accessible to subscriber on Musk's social
• 2:10
  media platform X. The company introduced its
• 2:13
  latest AI model, Grok 1.5 learned.
• 2:16
  The company introduced its latest AI model, Grok 1.5,
• 2:19
  earlier this year, and Musk originally Co founded Open AI as
• 2:23
  a nonprofit research lab in 2015 with Sam Altman, who currently
• 2:27
  serves as Open AICEO. However, Musk left the company
• 2:31
  following a dispute over control.
• 2:33
  Recently, tensions resurfaced when Musk and Open AI and Altman
• 2:36
  accusing them of deviating from Open AI's initial mission for
• 2:40
  profit motives. Since its inception, XA has been
• 2:44
  closely integrated with X. The AI startup benefits from
• 2:47
  exclusive access to X's vast repository of post for training
• 2:51
  its models, and additionally, X AI employees have occasionally
• 2:54
  operated from Twitter's long standing headquarters in
• 2:57
  downtown San Francisco. Now, Elon Musk hinted at more
• 3:01
  announcements in the coming weeks on X following the
• 3:03
  fundraising revelation. And this development positions
• 3:06
  X. AI as a significant player in
• 3:08
  need to compete with established AI firms like Open AI and others
• 3:12
  in the AI landscape. Now, the new funds are entirely
• 3:15
  fresh capital as confirmed by Musk to Axios.
• 3:18
  There's no indication that these are shares from Musk's
• 3:21
  acquisition of Twitter. Despite the overlap of
• 3:23
  investors, it remains unclear if the original backers of Twitter
• 3:27
  received additional equity in X AI.
• 3:29
  In addition to Anderson, Horowitz and Sequoia Capital,
• 3:32
  other notable investors in the Series B round include Valor
• 3:35
  Equity VI Capital, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in Kingdom
• 3:40
  Holding. It's a diverse group and there's
• 3:43
  broad interest in XA is potential, and there's potential
• 3:47
  to make a lot of money now. XAI has not disclosed specific
• 3:50
  plans for the new funding. However, recent reports from The
• 3:53
  Information suggest that the company aims to build a massive
• 3:56
  new supercomputer, referred to as the Gigafactory of Compute,
• 4:00
  possibly in collaboration with Oracle.
• 4:04
  And the potential supercomputer, as reported, would significantly
• 4:07
  exceed the capacity of existing GPU clusters.
• 4:11
  The project would involve Nvidia's high demand H 100
• 4:14
  graphics processing units, which are essential for data center
• 4:18
  operations and AI development. Now, going back to Grok, the
• 4:22
  Grok 2 model required approximately 20,000 NVIDIA H100
• 4:26
  GPU's for training, according to Elon.
• 4:29
  Future models such as Grok 3 will necessitate even more, with
• 4:33
  estimates suggesting up to 100,000 NVIDIA H100 chips now.
• 4:39
  Musk's establishment of X AI last year was for a creation of
• 4:46
  a formidable competitor to Microsoft backed Open AI and
• 4:49
  Google's AI endeavors. His departure from Open AI and
• 4:53
  subsequent legal actions show that there's ongoing tensions
• 4:57
  within the AI research community.
• 4:59
  And there's a battle going on, and it's great for all of us
• 5:01
  because we get better products out of it.
• 5:04
  Now. Bringing AI products to market
• 5:06
  is complex, even for leading tech firms and even for Elon
• 5:09
  Musk. It takes a lot of money and a
• 5:11
  lot of time and a lot of very talented people to do this.
• 5:14
  Now, Google's recent introduction of an AI generated
• 5:16
  search tool faced criticism for delivering inaccurate
• 5:20
  information. And this shows that it's very
• 5:22
  difficult to get these things right.
• 5:25
  Investment in AI has surged. It's sort of likethe.com bubble
• 5:30
  from earlier, but I don't think it's going to be a bubble.
• 5:33
  It is not financial advice, by the way, that is driven by the
• 5:37
  potential for these technologies to transform various aspects of
• 5:40
  our lives, make life a lot easier and work a lot easier
• 5:44
  too. And major companies like
• 5:46
  Microsoft and Amazon have made significant investments in AI
• 5:50
  firms, billions of dollars. And there's potential for
• 5:53
  transformative technologies here.
• 5:56
  And as Open AI and XAI continue to compete, XAI is getting more
• 6:02
  funding, billions of dollars is poised to advance his
• 6:06
  technological capabilities and market presence within the next
• 6:10
  six months. The new developments and further
• 6:12
  announcements from Musk will shape the trajectory of XAI and
• 6:16
  also their competitors in the coming years.
• 6:27
  Hey, thank you so much for listening today.
• 6:28
  I really do appreciate your support.
• 6:30
  If you could take a second and hit the subscribe or the follow
• 6:33
  button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening
• 6:35
  on right now, I greatly appreciate it.
• 6:38
  It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never
• 6:41
  miss an episode. And each episode is about 10
• 6:44
  minutes or less to get you caught up quickly.
• 6:46
  And please, if you want to support the show even more, go
• 6:49
  to patreon.com/stage Zero and please take care of yourselves
• 6:55
  and each other and I'll see you tomorrow.