Infrastructure Engineer

Elon Musk's AI startup xAI is in early talks to raise new funding at a potential valuation of up to $120 billion, up from $80 billion a month ago, according to The New York Times. The fundraising round could bring in as much as $20 billion. This follows OpenAI's March funding round, which valued it at $300 billion. xAI's chatbot Grok is trained on user data from Musk's social media platform X and is available exclusively there.

Ark Invest CEO and Founder Cathie Wood is no stranger to loving companies that are founded and/or run by Elon Musk, with her early bets on Tesla, SpaceX and others.The Ark Venture Fund, which offers access to private companies, added to its stake in a Musk company during the first quarter. This is in addition to SpaceX already being the fund’s top holding.What Happened: During the first quarter, the Ark Venture Fund reinvested in X Corp, the company previously known as Twitter. That new stake converted into a position in xAI, Musk's artificial intelligence company, thanks to a merger of the two companies.The merger valued xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion to create the combined xAI Holdings Corp company.Ark's quarter summary letter said the combined company will integrate the "cutting-edge foundational models" of xAI with X's user base of more than 600 million people. The letter said the merger could "unlock a platform that blends real-time communication with AI-enhanced discovery, truth-seeking, and personalized knowledge delivery.""We believe this merger will be a significant catalyst for consumer AI adoption and foundational model monetization," the letter said.Here are the fund's top 10 holdings as of April 30, with the percent of the fund's assets:SpaceX: 14.6% OpenAI: 7.5% X.AI: 6.3% Hammerspace: 3.6% Anthropic: 3.5% Lambda Labs: 3.5% Blockdaemon: 3.3% Epic Games: 2.6% Shield AI: 2.5% Radiant Industries: 2.4%SpaceX and xAI, two Musk-related companies are two of the top three holdings, while OpenAI, which Musk was also involved with previously, ranks second.Together, the stakes in SpaceX and xAI represent 20.9% of the fund's assets.Read Also: Buffett, Musk, Wood, Cuban Or Ackman: Who Do Investors Trust Most With Life Savings? Poll Shows It Isn’t Even CloseOther Investments: The Ark Venture Fund made several investments in sectors it believes in for the long-term as part of its strategy to find innovative companies."Amid the volatility and uncertainty dominating the opening months of the year, our conviction in the opportunity to invest in disruptive innovation remains strong," Ark said.In the Robotics sector, Ark Venture Fund invested in Apptronik and Kodiak Robotics. The company said Apptronik is addressing global labor shortages and working toward a future where robots and humans can work together. Kodiak Robotics is an autonomous trucking company founded by Don Burnette, who was a co-founder of Uber's self-driving truck division."As autonomous logistics scales, Kodiak is well positioned to lead in operational efficiency and safety."The Ark Venture Fund also made its first investment in the nuclear energy space with an investment in Radiant Nuclear

Apple is “actively looking at” revamping its Safari web browser to concentrate on artificial intelligence (AI)-powered search engines and shift away from Google search, potentially creating a colossal shift in the mobile browser landscape. This disclosure was made by Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services Eddy Cue during his testimony in the U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit against Alphabet, the parent company of Google, according to Bloomberg on Wednesday (May 7). The lawsuit centers on the estimated $20 billion-a-year agreement that makes Google the default search engine in Safari on Apple devices. This legal challenge could potentially compel the two technology giants to dismantle the agreement