xAI, the artificial intelligence company founded by Elon Musk that develops the Grok models, said on 6 January 2026 that it had closed a $20bn Series E round. The round was upsized from an earlier target of $15bn.
Financial investors named by the company were Valor Equity Partners, StepStone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX and Baron Capital Group. NVIDIA and Cisco Investments joined as strategic investors to support the build-out of its computing infrastructure. xAI said other partners took part but did not name them.
The company did not disclose a valuation or how much each investor put in. The Week reported that the valuation was reportedly about $230bn, a figure xAI has not confirmed.
What xAI does
xAI was founded in 2023 and is based in Palo Alto, California, according to Wikipedia. It builds the Grok family of large language models and the Grok assistant, which is also available on the social network X. In March 2025 xAI was combined with X Corp in a deal that, according to Wikipedia, valued xAI at $80bn and X at $33bn.
In its announcement the company said its Grok 4 models were in use and that Grok 5 was in training. Its other products include Grok Voice, Grok Imagine and Grok on X. xAI said its products reach about 600 million monthly active users across the X and Grok apps.
Wikipedia lists Elon Musk as the founder and gives the company's address as 1450 Page Mill Road in Stanford Research Park, Palo Alto, with a second site in Bastrop, Texas.
What the money is for
xAI said the new funding will speed up its infrastructure build-out, support faster development and deployment of AI products, and fund research. It did not give a breakdown of how the money will be spent.
The company runs what it calls the Colossus I and II supercomputers and said it ended 2025 with more than one million H100 GPU equivalents. The Week reported that xAI plans to expand its data centres, add computing power and train more advanced Grok models, and to develop voice, image and video generation for consumers and businesses.
The participation of NVIDIA and Cisco Investments links the round to xAI's hardware needs. The Week reported that the two strategic investors are expected to contribute technology partnerships as well as cash. xAI also said it is hiring.
Pulse 2.0 quoted xAI as saying that the financing would accelerate what it called its world-leading infrastructure build-out.
The funding so far
The Series E follows several large rounds. According to Wikipedia, xAI raised $135m in late 2023, $6bn in May 2024 at a $24bn post-money valuation and another $6bn in December 2024 at a $50bn post-money valuation. In mid-2025 it raised $5bn in debt and $5bn in equity, according to Wikipedia, which cites Morgan Stanley.
xAI did not remain independent for long after the round. Wikipedia reports that SpaceX acquired xAI on 2 February 2026 in an all-stock deal that valued xAI at $250bn.
Company website: x.ai