Elon Musk's xAI raising $10 billion at $200 billion valuation: sources (www.cnbc.com)

Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI has secured a new $10 billion investment that sources told CNBC values the company at roughly $200 billion post-money, following an earlier recent raise that implied a ~$150 billion valuation and a December $6 billion round. The funding spree places xAI alongside other highly valued foundational-model firms (Anthropic’s $13 billion at $183 billion, OpenAI’s $500 billion secondary) despite widespread views that xAI’s Grok assistant currently trails Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s GPT models in capabilities and user base. For the AI/ML community this underscores an escalating “compute and capital” arms race: Musk reportedly wants to buy a million AI chips, and much of the new cash is expected to build GPU-heavy data centers (NVIDIA/AMD chips), expand a large cluster under construction in Memphis, and hire costly talent to train next‑generation models. The round highlights two practical implications—intense competition for scarce GPU resources and talent, and growing concentration of compute power with well‑funded players—which will shape research priorities, deployment timelines, and market power even if product readiness currently lags valuation.