One billion US dollars per month: that's how much it will cost to operate xAI

Currently, the artificial intelligence business is still a bet on the future: in the case of AI provider xAI, which was founded by Elon Musk, it is said to be an entrepreneurial gamble that costs the company one billion US dollars every month. This was reported by the US financial news agency Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources close to xAI. Elon Musk described the report on his social network X as “nonsense”.

According to Bloomberg, xAI is currently trying to raise 9.3 billion US dollars in capital. This is intended to close a financing gap. A shortfall of around 13 billion US dollars is expected for the whole of 2025. This means that the start-up will only just be able to keep pace with expenditure with its financing rounds.

xAI relies on its infrastructure

The majority of the costs are accounted for by server farms and specialized computer chips, which are needed to train the advanced Grok AI models. However, market observers believe that xAI has an advantage in the long term: while competitors rent chips and server capacity, Musk's company invests in its infrastructure. In addition, xAI also saves on the procurement of training material, as it can draw on the data archives of X and Twitter.

Analysts say that xAI is not alone in its immense expenditure. They estimate that around 1.8 trillion US dollars will be invested in AI infrastructure worldwide by 2030.

Black figures from 2027?

xAI is expected to reach profitability earlier than other AI model providers, namely as early as 2027. xAI, on the other hand, is only expecting revenue of around 500 million US dollars in the current year, according to Bloomberg. By 2026, revenue is expected to rise to over two billion US dollars. In comparison: ChatGPT provider OpenAI does not expect to be in the black until 2029. xAI is therefore currently valued at 80 billion US dollars. At the end of 2024, the company was still valued at 51 billion US dollars.

(mki)