OpenAI on Monday 31st March 2025 announced it had closed its $40 billion funding round, the most ever raised by a private tech company.
The deal values OpenAI at $300 billion, including the new capital.
The round includes $30 billion from SoftBank and $10 billion from a syndicate of investors.
OpenAI is now more valuable than Chevron.
The generative AI market is projected to exceed $1 trillion in revenue within the next decade. Companies such as Google, Amazon, Anthropic, and Perplexity are rapidly unveiling new products and features as competition to develop ‘AI agents’ intensifies.
Tesla boss Elon Musk says the electric car maker will start producing and using humanoid robots from next year.
In a social media update, Elon Musk stated that Tesla will initially employ the robots, with plans to commence production for sale by 2026.
He had earlier anticipated that the robot, named Optimus, would be operational in Tesla factories by this year’s end. Additionally, companies such as Honda Rototics and Boston Dynamics are also advancing their humanoid robot technologies.
“Tesla will have genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year and, hopefully, high production for other companies in 2026,” Mr Musk posted on his social media platform X.
Grok is a neologism (a newly coined word or expression), referenced by Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. It means to understand something so deeply that you become one with it.
Grok is a term used in computer programming to mean to ‘profoundly understand something‘, such as a system, a language, or an algorithm.
Elon Musk’s Grok
Elon Musk debuts ‘Grok’ AI bot to rival ChatGPT and others. But, ‘Grok’ isn’t quite ready yet for the general public – it still has some learning to do. xAI, Elon Musk’s new AI venture, launched its first AI chatbot technology named ‘Grok’.
The prototype is in its infancy and early stages of training and is only available to a select group of users before a wider release.
Elon Musk debuts ‘Grok’ AI bot to rival ChatGPT and others. But, ‘Grok’ isn’t quite ready yet for the general public – it still has some learning to do…
Musk is positioning xAI to compete with OpenAI, Inflection, Anthropic and others.
Less woke
Grok, the company said, is modelled on‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’. It is supposed to have ‘a bit of wit, a rebellious streak’ and it should answer the ‘spicy questions’ that other AI might dodge, according to a statement from xAI.
Grok, the company said, is modelled on ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’.
The company’s published mandate is to build artificial intelligence ‘to advance our collective understanding of the universe’. Musk has previously said that he believes today’s AI makers are bending too far toward ‘politically correct’ systems.
xAI’s mission, it reportedly said, ‘is to create AI for people of all backgrounds and political views’.
Future AI
Self-driving car technology, an AI Chatbot built around humour with access to current public data through X, a robot called Optimus and Musk’s drive for the ‘different’. If you add all this together, X.ai, through Musk, is likely positioning itself for the next big push in AI…
