In a major move, the Oman Investment Authority (OIA) has acquired a key stake in xAI, an artificial intelligence start-up owned by billionaire tech maverick Elon Musk, as part of the wealth fund’s global expansion strategy. It is worth noting that OIA is also a stakeholder in SpaceX, Musk’s space technology company which owns the Starlink satellite communication system.
OIA Chairman Abdulsalam Al Murshidi has termed the move in line with the Authority’s strategy to invest in advanced technologies across diverse sectors. XAI ranks among the top five in its field, having achieved milestones such as the creation of a massive data centre in the United States and the launch of the upgraded Grok 2 platform.
The venture, in the coming days, aims to lead AI technology by understanding and analysing real-time data, a feature lacking in many competing models.
“The platform provides advanced tools and comprehensive analytics to help users explore and improve AI models, processing a wide range of visual data, including documents, charts, graphs, and photographs,” Al Murshidi added.
Speaking on the occasion, Elon Musk, through video conference, said that the partnership with XAI would yield results in developing superintelligent AI capable of solving numerous problems. The tech boss, whose social media platform X played a crucial role in ensuring Republican Donald Trump’s win in the recently concluded US Presidential Elections, also revealed that the start-up was nearing completion of training the ‘Grok 3’ model, which will be the smartest AI model in the world.
The AI company recently raised USD 6 billion in funding, with some 97 investors donating a minimum of USD 77,593 (as per the media reports). The new cash brings xAI’s total raised to USD 12 billion, adding to the USD 6 billion tranche the start-up raised in 2024. CNBC reported in November that xAI was aiming for a USD 50 billion valuation, double its valuation as of six months ago.
According to the Financial Times, only investors who’d backed xAI in its previous fundraising round were permitted to participate in this one. Reportedly, investors who helped finance Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition were given access to up to 25% of xAI’s shares.
Elon Musk formed xAI in 2023. Soon after, the company released Grok, a flagship generative AI model that now powers a number of features on X, including a chatbot accessible to X Premium subscribers and free users in some regions.
He has projected Grok as an alternative to ChatGPT and other AI systems that the billionaire tech boss believes are “too woke.” He’s also referred to Grok as “maximally truth-seeking” and less biased than competing models. Grok has become an established feature in X (formerly Twitter). Due to an integration with the open image generator Flux, Grok can generate, and analyse images on X, apart from summarising news and trending events.
As per the reports, Grok will be further empowered to handle even more X functions in the future, from enhancing the micro-blogging platform’s search capabilities and account bios to helping with post analytics and reply settings.
As it takes on ChatGPT and other generative AI models, xAI launched an API in October 2024, allowing customers to build Grok into third-party apps, platforms, and services. There were reports about xAI preparing to release a standalone consumer app similar to OpenAI.