Elon Musk has a certified rocketship in his hands — and, no, we’re not talking about SpaceX.
One of his other companies, his artificial-intelligence startup xAI, has catapulted from launch just 16 months ago into an AI company now worth a reported $50 billion.
The chart below underlines just how rapid xAI’s rise has been.
So how does that $50 billion compare to the competition?
It took OpenAI, last valued at $157 billion in October, about nine years to reach the $50 billion milestone, according to PitchBook data.
Elon Musk, starting with a team of 12 people in July 2023, did it in less than a year and a half.
The $50 billion valuation furthers the valuation gap between xAI and smaller rivals like Anthropic (valued at $19 billion) and Perplexity (valued at $2.8 billion), and has it approaching the market cap of companies like the fast-fashion giant Shein, which was valued at $66 billion …