A bold step was taken by Caithe Woods to invest $60 million in Elon Musk‘s xAI startup. By investing, they showed their belief in Musk‘s xAI having the potential to grow shortly.
The giant investment management firm led by Wood, announced its participation in Musk‘s artificial intelligence firm.
On May 28, the company informed its clients about the investment in xAI through an email. As reported by Bloomberg, ARK’s Chief Futurist, Brett Winton, mentioned that it accounts for approximately 2% of the fund’s holdings.
“xAI’s access to X’s distribution and real-time data differentiates it from any other AI play, particularly when combined with Elon Musk’s maniacal focus on velocity.”
X launched AI-curated audiences on May 10. This feature lets advertisers set their target audiences while X’s AI creates relevant user groups.
In recent years, ARK has continuously participated in AI-related investments. During the previous month, the company disclosed that 4% of its total holdings are in OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. In another statement, they stated that 5% of their total assets are philanthropic.
According to Winton, the AI model is worth “multiple trillions of dollars by the end of this decade.”
During the pandemic, in 2019, Wood made a news headline by investing in Tesla, another program of Musk.
Musk launched his xAI venture in March 2023 in a bid against market giants like OperAI, Google, and Microsoft.
On May 26, xAI announced that in the Series B funding round, it raised $6 billion. Major investors included Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity Management & Research Company, and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal with Kingdom Holding.
After this funding round, a milestone of $24 billion was achieved by xAI, making its startup possible in just 1 year. Elon Musk also whispered about launching a new data center by the fall 2025.
The project, named the “Gigafactory of Compute,” is designed to train and develop the next generation of the company’s Grok AI system.
After these developments emerged, Musk remained silent and did not provide his opinion on this news.
At the VivaTech Paris 2024 conference, Musk said his main worry with current AI models is that they focus on “political correctness” instead of seeking the truth. He also mentioned that soon AI will “do everything better than you” and eventually make jobs unnecessary.
