Artificial intelligence (AI) startup xAI, owned by billionaire Elon Musk is close to reaching $6b in investor support.

Musk has been outspoken about his aims to win the war to be crowned the American leader in the AI industry. With this investment in xAI from the same faces that funded his takeover of Twitter, he looks like he might be in catching the other major players in the battle for that throne.

Musk’s xAI boosted by billions

Despite his controversial reputation, Musk’s business ideas have always garnered support from venture capitalists. The Financial Times reports that Sequoia Capital, a prominent investor, is leading the charge in backing Musk’s bid for AI dominance.

According to reports coinciding with the FT from Bloomberg, this most recent round of funding values xAI at $18 billion.

The billionaire businessman in the Forbes Rich List’s top 10 has his heart set on rivaling ChatGPT in both reach and research. To make a play for that top spot, xAI launched Grok, an AI chatbot.

Sadly for Grok its integration with X (Formerly known as Twitter) received worldwide criticism for its utterly made-up news. Most recently NBA star Klay Thompson was accused of vandalism, when “throwing bricks” but in fact, it was a bit of basketball slang for being pretty rubbish and hitting the rim when shooting.

Musk started a recruitment campaign to pilfer Tesla’s top talent to improve Grok. This approach would have a domino effect in the world of highly sought-after AI specialists.

We reported that Tesla lost one of their leading engineers to Musk’s surge for the AI crown. Musk stated that the “talent war for AI is the craziest talent war I’ve ever seen.”

Musk made the news earlier this month for all the wrong reasons. He cut short a business trip to India after the company slashed the price of its electric vehicles.

Tesla cut prices domestically for its five landmark cars but has also applied the cut rates globally, impacting the international electric vehicle market.

So eyes will be on Grok and Musk’s march to the top of the AI world. With this investment from major backers and their trust, Musk will have to hope this is one business venture that makes more money than it loses.

Image: Ideogram.