Elon Musk wants you to know he’s a bit bored of cars. He built a ridiculous one but it didn’t make him happy. He turned the EV industry pacesetter into a mass-market producer of generic-vehicle-shaped-objects, which didn’t make him happy. He put the world’s most valuable marque on knick-knacks for the purpose of owning the libs, and it didn’t make him happy.
What might make him happy? Is it money? Per MainFT:
Elon Musk’s xAI is in talks to raise up to $6bn, as the Tesla and X chief looks to global investors, including in Hong Kong, to finance his challenge to Microsoft-backed OpenAI.
The billionaire’s artificial intelligence start-up has courted wealthy individuals and investors around the world in recent weeks, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
According to four people, these talks have included family offices in Hong Kong, the territory that is increasingly controlled by Beijing.
Three people with knowledge of the talks said Musk hoped to raise as much as $6bn in fresh equity capital for xAI at a proposed valuation of $20bn. However, the people cautioned that negotiations were ongoing and that the Tesla chief was still testing investor appetite for such large sums.
The xAI fundraising runs parallel to Musk’s discussions with the Tesla board over whether his stake in Tesla is big enough to work primarily for Tesla.