Musk Denies xAI $10B Funding Report Amid AI Race

Elon Musk has publicly refuted a CNBC report alleging that his artificial intelligence firm, xAI, was actively seeking to raise $10 billion at a valuation of $200 billion. Musk stated on his social media platform X, "Fake news. xAI is not raising any capital right now." The CNBC report had suggested these funds would be allocated to infrastructure expansion, including data centers equipped with Nvidia and AMD GPUs, as well as for the development of next-generation AI and talent acquisition. xAI is engaged in a competitive landscape with major players such as OpenAI and Anthropic. The company is concurrently expanding its data center capacity and operating a supercomputer cluster named Colossus. Had the reported $200 billion valuation been accurate, it would signify a substantial increase from the company's July valuation of $75 billion, positioning xAI among highly valued private companies like OpenAI and ByteDance. For context, competitor Anthropic recently disclosed a $13 billion funding round at an $183 billion valuation. Investor interest in AI startups continues to be robust. A Morgan Stanley report released in late June indicated that xAI had already secured $5 billion in debt financing and a separate $5 billion strategic equity investment aimed at infrastructure expansion.