Elon Musk Reclaims the Title of World’s Richest Person Thanks to His New AI Startup

Elon Musk Reclaims the Title of World’s Richest Person Thanks to His New AI Startup – The Memorial Day weekend was particularly memorable for Elon Musk, who announced during the holiday that his new artificial intelligence startup, xAI, had raised $6 billion with a pre-money valuation of $18 billion. This news has been enough for Musk to surpass French luxury magnate Bernard Arnault once again in the race for the title of the world’s richest person.

Musk’s net worth is now estimated to be $209.5 billion, putting him $5.2 billion ahead of Arnault, whose net worth is valued at $204.3 billion. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos now occupies third place with an estimated fortune of $200 billion, having swapped second place with Musk in recent months.

Musk launched xAI, best known for its chatbot Grok, last July with the aim of competing with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, which Musk co-founded in 2015 before leaving the company three years later. Musk has criticized ChatGPT for its “woke” approach and has sued OpenAI, claiming that its pursuit of profits has undermined the original mission to develop open-source general artificial intelligence that “benefits humanity.” In the press release on Sunday announcing the recent fundraising, xAI highlighted the launch of an open-source version of Grok as one of its achievements. In a subsequent tweet, Musk invited engineers to “join xAI if they believe in our mission to understand the universe, which requires a pursuit of truth with the utmost rigor, regardless of popularity or political correctness.”

Musk is estimated to hold a 60% stake in xAI, valued at $14.4 billion following this latest funding round. This deal was led by a group of investors who also backed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, including Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, and Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal of Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Company. Most of Musk’s wealth remains tied to his 12% stake in Tesla (excluding options) and his estimated 42% stake in SpaceX, each valued at around $75 billion. Meanwhile, Musk’s 74% stake in his social media company is now estimated to be worth approximately $7 billion, nearly 70% less than what he paid for it in 2022.

The fluctuations in Tesla’s stock value and the growth of SpaceX have led Musk to move in and out of the top position as the world’s richest person in recent years. Arnault surpassed Musk at the end of January when a Delaware judge invalidated nearly $50 billion in performance-based Tesla stock options originally granted to Musk in 2018, after ruling that Musk and certain Tesla board members could not demonstrate that the process underlying the grant was fair. Tesla shareholders will vote on the reapproval of Musk’s options on June 13. Meanwhile, SpaceX is reportedly considering a public offering that would value the company at around $200 billion, up from $180 billion last December. In other words, Arnault’s days at the top might be numbered.

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