Chipmaking giant Nvidia is in talks with Elon Musk about investing in his fast-growing artificial intelligence startup xAI, a source near the situation said.
XAI — which powers the snarky Grok chatbot on Musk’s X social network — is in talks with some investors about raising several billion dollars at a roughly $40 billion valuation, the WSJ reported this week.
The Information reported he was talking to strategic investors — meaning tech corporations versus investment firms — but didn’t offer any names.
Enterprise firms including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Vy Capital have been included in the most recent funding talks, the tech news site reported.
Nvidia — which under CEO Jensen Huang last week surpassed Apple to turn out to be the world’s most dear company with a market capitalization of greater than $3.5 trillion — declined to comment when contacted by The Post.
The corporate had strongly denied similar rumors within the spring.
Musk is expecting in January to carry a serious recent fund-raising round that might value xAI at as much as $75 billion, two sources said.
It’s common for chipmakers like Nvidia to co-invest with their customers on projects, in line with industry insiders.
One Nvidia analyst who asked to not be named said xAI’s competitors would still buy Nvidia’s chips even when it invests in xAI.
“If not, this transaction would never go forward,” the analyst said.
In a December 2023 blog post, Nvidia said it had made investments in greater than two dozen corporations last yr because the pace of innovation in AI and accelerated computing quickens.
“Nvidia’s corporate investments arm focuses on strategic collaborations,” Nvidia said within the blog post. “These partnerships stimulate joint innovation, enhance the Nvidia platform and expand the ecosystem.”
Some insiders say an xAI-Nvidia partnership could be a natural fit, given Musk’s extensive collaboration with Nvidia across his business empire.
In an Oct. 17 podcast, Huang praised Musk for constructing the fastest supercomputer on the planet along with his company’s assistance in 19 days.
In April, Nvidia’s stock rose after Musk said Tesla would want access to more of Nvidia’s high-end chips to power the electrical automotive maker’s AI plans, Barron’s reported.
Musk also said in April that xAI would want 100,000 Nvidia H100 chips to coach the upgraded versions of its chatbot “Grok 3.”
The present version, Grok 2, took about 20,000 chips.
Musk was even quoted in a Nvidia press release following the discharge of its advanced Blackwell AI chips.
“There’s currently nothing higher than Nvidia hardware for AI,” Musk said in the discharge.
Musk’s xAI is a direct competitor to Google’s Gemini AI platform and OpenAI-backed ChatGPT.
Chipmaking giant Nvidia is in talks with Elon Musk about investing in his fast-growing artificial intelligence startup xAI, a source near the situation said.
XAI — which powers the snarky Grok chatbot on Musk’s X social network — is in talks with some investors about raising several billion dollars at a roughly $40 billion valuation, the WSJ reported this week.
The Information reported he was talking to strategic investors — meaning tech corporations versus investment firms — but didn’t offer any names.
Enterprise firms including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Vy Capital have been included in the most recent funding talks, the tech news site reported.
Nvidia — which under CEO Jensen Huang last week surpassed Apple to turn out to be the world’s most dear company with a market capitalization of greater than $3.5 trillion — declined to comment when contacted by The Post.
The corporate had strongly denied similar rumors within the spring.
Musk is expecting in January to carry a serious recent fund-raising round that might value xAI at as much as $75 billion, two sources said.
It’s common for chipmakers like Nvidia to co-invest with their customers on projects, in line with industry insiders.
One Nvidia analyst who asked to not be named said xAI’s competitors would still buy Nvidia’s chips even when it invests in xAI.
“If not, this transaction would never go forward,” the analyst said.
In a December 2023 blog post, Nvidia said it had made investments in greater than two dozen corporations last yr because the pace of innovation in AI and accelerated computing quickens.
“Nvidia’s corporate investments arm focuses on strategic collaborations,” Nvidia said within the blog post. “These partnerships stimulate joint innovation, enhance the Nvidia platform and expand the ecosystem.”
Some insiders say an xAI-Nvidia partnership could be a natural fit, given Musk’s extensive collaboration with Nvidia across his business empire.
In an Oct. 17 podcast, Huang praised Musk for constructing the fastest supercomputer on the planet along with his company’s assistance in 19 days.
In April, Nvidia’s stock rose after Musk said Tesla would want access to more of Nvidia’s high-end chips to power the electrical automotive maker’s AI plans, Barron’s reported.
Musk also said in April that xAI would want 100,000 Nvidia H100 chips to coach the upgraded versions of its chatbot “Grok 3.”
The present version, Grok 2, took about 20,000 chips.
Musk was even quoted in a Nvidia press release following the discharge of its advanced Blackwell AI chips.
“There’s currently nothing higher than Nvidia hardware for AI,” Musk said in the discharge.
Musk’s xAI is a direct competitor to Google’s Gemini AI platform and OpenAI-backed ChatGPT.
