SpaceX to invest $2bn in Musk’s xAI startup: report

(Reuters): SpaceX has committed $2 billion to xAI as part of a $5 billion equity round, deepening the ties between tech billionaire Elon Musk’s ventures as his artificial intelligence startup races to compete with rival OpenAI, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

The investment follows xAI’s merger with X and values the combined company at $113 billion, with the Grok chatbot now powering Starlink support and eyed for future integration into Tesla’s Optimus robots, the report added.

In response to a post on X about whether Tesla, could also invest in xAI, Elon Musk said on Sunday, “It would be great, but subject to board and shareholder approval,” without confirming or denying the Journal report on SpaceX’s investment plans in xAI.

SpaceX, xAI and Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Reuters could not immediately confirm the WSJ report.

Despite recent controversies involving Grok’s responses, Musk has called it “the smartest AI in the world,” and xAI continues to spend heavily on model training and infrastructure.

In another development, Elon Musk’s startup xAI issued an apology on Saturday for offensive comments made by its AI assistant, Grok, earlier this week. The company attributed the incident to a software update intended to make the AI behave more like a human.

Following Tuesday’s update, Grok made posts on social media platform X that included praise for Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and implied that individuals with Jewish surnames were more likely to spread hate online.

X deleted some of those posts several hours later, amid growing outrage.