Elon Musk's artificial intelligence start-up xAI has initiated steps to raise up to US$1 billion through an equity offering, Reuters reported, citing a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday.
xAI has already secured $134.7 million in equity financing from the proposed US$1 billion offering.
Fund raisings for AI remain a bright spot for start-ups this year, notably following Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)'s US$10 billion investment in OpenAI's ChatGPT.
However, regulatory bodies have expressed concerns over the potential misuse of such technologies for disseminating misinformation.
Safer AI technologies
Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but resigned from its board in 2018, has been vocal about developing safer AI technologies.
During a Twitter Spaces event earlier this year, he said xAI will seek to create a "maximally curious" AI, rather than embedding specific moral codes.
Musk launched xAI in July, positioning it as a "maximum truth-seeking AI" to rival Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL)'s Bard and Microsoft's Bing AI.
Integration
The Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) chief plans to integrate the artificial intelligence start-up into his social media platform X and also offer it as a standalone application.
xAI introduced Grok last month, a chatbot poised to compete with ChatGPT.
The team behind xAI comprises experts from Google's DeepMind, the parent company of Windows, and other leading AI research institutions.