CNBC reported in November that a financing would value the artificial intelligence startup at about $230 billion. After an initial report that xAI was raising $15 billion, Musk called the story “False” in a post on\u00a0X<\/a>.<\/p>\n Investors included Nvidia<\/a> and Cisco Investments<\/a> as well as long-time Musk company backers Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity, Qatar Investment Authority, Abu Dhabi’s MGX and Baron Capital Group. <\/p>\n Both Nvidia and Cisco work with xAI as vendors and strategic partners.<\/p>\n AI startups reached sky-high valuations in 2025, raising massive amounts of capital to power seemingly endless demand for their foundational models. In October, OpenAI closed<\/a> a $6.6 billion share sale at a $500 billion valuation, and a month later Anthropic was valued<\/a> at around $350 billion, with capital coming from Microsoft<\/a> and Nvidia. <\/p>\n Musk’s AI venture now owns and operates his social network X after merging<\/a> with the company, formerly known as Twitter, in March. <\/p>\n The company faces a new flurry of regulatory probes by authorities in Europe, India and Malaysia after its Grok chatbot generated sexualized images of children and non-consensual intimate images of adults, mostly women. Users shared the images widely on X.<\/p>\n Musk is centering xAI’s infrastructure buildout in Memphis, Tennessee. The data centers, which use natural gas-burning turbines as a power source, have drawn consternation<\/a> from many nearby residents, as emissions have contributed to air quality problems in the area, according to local researchers.<\/p>\n Despite its controversies, xAI landed a deal with the\u00a0Department of Defense,\u00a0<\/a>which recently added Grok to its AI agents platform. Grok is also the\u00a0main chatbot<\/a>\u00a0for prediction betting platforms Polymarket and Kalshi.<\/p>\n
![\"Elon](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/108249005-17677310951767731093-43364157535-1080pnbcnews.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk attends the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 19, 2025. Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,9896,1500,3083,3085,44120,295,15253,8572,53,16,15,3141],"class_list":{"0":"post-678587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-autos","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-technology","13":"tag-business-news","14":"tag-cisco-systems-inc","15":"tag-elon-musk","16":"tag-microsoft-corp","17":"tag-nvidia-corp","18":"tag-technology","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-venture-capital"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115850473818944411","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}