Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Company (KHC) recently announced that it acquired an additional stake in Elon Musk’s xAI Corporation for SAR1.5 billion ($400 million) through its participation in the Series C funding round.
This transaction comes after Kingdom Holding invested the same value in xAI during its Series B funding round, bringing the total investment value to $800 million. “The transaction further solidifies KHC’s strategic partnership with Elon Musk and follows its strategic stake in X (Twitter), held since 2015,” the company added in a statement on the Saudi Exchange.
Key GCC investors
xAI is an artificial intelligence company formed by Elon Musk and a team of world-class engineers. It aims to build artificial intelligence to accelerate human scientific discovery. Its strategy is to develop leading AI models and work closely with other technology companies associated with its founder including Tesla, SpaceX and X, whose app has more than 500 million users.
In its latest statement, xAI revealed that it closed its Series C funding round of $6 billion with participation from key investors including A16Z, Blackrock, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Lightspeed, Morgan Stanley, Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners and Vy Capital, amongst others. Strategic investors NVIDIA and AMD also participated and continue to support xAI in rapidly scaling our infrastructure.
Some of the region’s most notable investors in this round included Kingdom Holdings, MGX, Oman Investment Authority and Qatar Investment Authority.
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xAI’s value surges to $45 billion
As part of its Series C funding round, xAI’s value reached $45 billion, reflecting a significant increase from its valuation of $25 billion during the Series B funding round in which Kingdom Holding Company participated. The company said that its investment has already appreciated, driven by the substantial valuation growth of xAI.
In its $6 billion Series B funding round, key players from Saudi Arabia invested in the company. The company revealed that Kingdom Holding and entrepreneur Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal were among some of the company’s top investors. In 2022, Kingdom Holding and Prince Alwaleed maintained their $1.89 billion stake in social media platform X after Musk took over the company. This makes them jointly the second-largest investors in the platform.
