Elon Musk's xAI valued at 156 trillion won

Expected to secure large-scale new investment

Financial Times (FT) reported on the 2nd (local time) that xAI, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup founded by Elon Musk, has launched a $300 million (about ₩410 billion) equity sale. The transaction is being conducted as a secondary sale in which shares held by employees are sold to outside investors. If completed, xAI's corporate value is expected to reach $113 billion (about ₩156 trillion).

xAI, an AI company founded by Musk in 2023, launched its holding company, xAI Holdings, in March after acquiring the social networking service platform X (formerly Twitter) owned by Musk. After this deal, xAI is expected to raise substantial new investment through the issuance of new shares, which could further increase its corporate value.

A secondary sale is a transaction method in which existing shareholders sell their shares to a third party without issuing new shares. For sellers, it provides a way to secure liquidity, and for investors, it offers an opportunity to invest in promising unlisted companies. In the United States, it is a common way to secure corporate liquidity, differing from the domestic venture ecosystem where financing is usually pursued through IPOs and M&As.

As global enthusiasm for AI investment is heating up, OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, is also cited as a case that secured large investments through a secondary sale. At the end of last year, OpenAI sold $1.5 billion (about ₩2 trillion) worth of employee shares to investors including SoftBank. Later, in a large investment round with new external investors in April this year, it secured $40 billion (about ₩59 trillion), giving OpenAI a valuation of $300 billion (about ₩439 trillion).

Reporter Choi Youngcho Youngchoi@hankyung.com