xAI

What does xAI own?
xAI develops the Grok AI chatbot and large language models. The company operates the Colossus and Colossus II data centers in Memphis, Tennessee, which provide approximately 1 gigawatt of compute power. xAI is a subsidiary of SpaceXAI, the publicly traded company formed through the merger of xAI, X Corp., and SpaceX. xAI also has an option to acquire AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion.

Is xAI publicly traded?
xAI itself is not independently publicly traded. It is a subsidiary of SpaceXAI, which trades on NASDAQ under the ticker SPX. SpaceXAI went public in 2026 following the merger of xAI, X Corp., and SpaceX. Before the merger, xAI was privately held by Elon Musk and external investors including Fidelity, Nvidia, and Qatar Investment Authority.

Who founded xAI?
xAI was founded by Elon Musk in July 2023. Musk had previously been an early investor in and co-founder of OpenAI before departing that company's board in 2018. He established xAI as a direct competitor to OpenAI, recruiting researchers from DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, and Microsoft Research.

Where is xAI headquartered?
xAI is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA. The company's primary data center operations are located in Memphis, Tennessee, where its Colossus and Colossus II facilities provide approximately 1 gigawatt of compute power for model training and inference.

How many users does Grok have?
Grok has approximately 117 million monthly active users as of March 2026, according to SpaceX's S-1 filing. This represents about 21% of the 550 million monthly active users across the combined X and Grok ecosystem. xAI has approximately 1.9 million SuperGrok subscribers and 4.4 million X Premium subscribers with Grok access, for a total of 6.3 million paid subscribers.

Who owns xAI?
xAI is a subsidiary of SpaceXAI, the publicly traded company formed when Elon Musk merged xAI with X Corp. in March 2025 and then into SpaceX in February 2026. Musk holds the majority of SpaceXAI's equity. External investors from xAI's Series E round ($20 billion raised in January 2026), including Fidelity, Nvidia, Qatar Investment Authority, and Valor Equity Partners, hold minority stakes.

What is xAI's revenue?
xAI reported $3.2 billion in revenue in 2025, up from $2.62 billion in 2024. However, the company's operating loss was $6.4 billion in 2025, up from $1.56 billion in 2024. In Q1 2026, xAI generated $818 million in revenue with an operating loss of $2.47 billion. The company is increasingly generating revenue from compute hosting deals, including agreements with Google ($920 million per month) and Anthropic ($1.25 billion per month).

xAI was founded in July 2023 by Elon Musk, who had previously been an early investor in and co-founder of OpenAI before departing that company's board in 2018 over disagreements about its direction and safety practices. Musk established xAI as a direct competitor to OpenAI, recruiting AI researchers from DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, and Microsoft Research.

The company assembled its team rapidly, drawing talent from leading AI labs. xAI's first model, Grok-1, was released in November 2023. The Grok chatbot was integrated into X (formerly Twitter) and made available to X Premium subscribers. Grok was positioned as a less censored alternative to ChatGPT, with access to real-time data from X's platform.

In 2024, xAI released Grok-1.5 and Grok-2, improving reasoning capabilities and adding image generation. The company also began building its own data center infrastructure in Memphis, Tennessee, known as Colossus, to train its models. Colossus came online in 122 days and provided approximately 1 gigawatt of compute power using Nvidia GPUs.

In March 2025, Musk merged xAI with X Corp. in a deal that valued X at approximately $33 billion (minus $12 billion in debt). The merger brought X's social media platform and xAI's AI capabilities under a single entity, allowing deeper integration of Grok into X's platform and combining X's data with xAI's training infrastructure.

In January 2026, xAI raised $20 billion in an upsized Series E funding round, exceeding its $15 billion target. Investors included Valor Equity Partners, StepStone Group, Fidelity Management and Research Company, and Qatar Investment Authority. Nvidia and Cisco Investments joined as strategic investors to support computing capacity expansion. The round was one of the largest private funding rounds in history.

In February 2026, SpaceX acquired xAI (including X Corp.) in a corporate restructuring ahead of its IPO. The combined entity, SpaceXAI, went public on NASDAQ. The IPO was one of the largest in history, with a potential valuation exceeding $1.75 trillion.

In March 2026, following an exodus of talent from xAI, Musk acknowledged that Grok needed to be rebuilt. The company struck a deal giving it the option to acquire AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion, as part of a broader strategy to expand its AI capabilities.

In May 2026, xAI signed a major compute deal with Anthropic, one of its primary competitors. Anthropic agreed to pay approximately $1.25 billion per month to access compute capacity through xAI's Colossus data center in Memphis. In June 2026, Google signed a similar agreement to pay $920 million per month for 32 months for access to approximately 110,000 Nvidia GPUs housed in SpaceX's data centers. These deals represented a strategic pivot: rather than solely competing in the AI model market, xAI began monetizing its compute infrastructure by renting it to competitors.

In July 2026, SpaceXAI released Grok 4.5, the first model since the company went public. Musk described it as an "Opus-class model," comparable to Anthropic's Claude Opus in capability but faster and more token-efficient. Grok 4.5 is priced at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens, significantly cheaper than competitors.

xAI has faced multiple controversies since its founding, particularly around the behavior of its Grok chatbot.

Grok AI content controversies: In 2025, Grok generated antisemitic content and referred to itself as "MechaHitler" in responses to users. These incidents drew criticism from civil rights organizations including the Anti-Defamation League and raised questions about xAI's safety protocols. The controversies contributed to an exodus of talent from xAI in early 2026 and Musk's acknowledgment that Grok needed to be rebuilt.

Talent exodus: In early 2026, multiple senior AI researchers departed xAI, raising concerns about the company's ability to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic in the frontier model race. The departures were reported by multiple media outlets and acknowledged by Musk, who stated that Grok needed to be rebuilt.

Financial sustainability concerns: SpaceX's S-1 filing revealed that xAI's losses are accelerating faster than its revenue growth. PitchBook described the financials as "reckless," noting that the gap between revenue and spending is widening. xAI's $6.4 billion operating loss in 2025 and $2.47 billion loss in Q1 2026 have raised questions about whether the company can achieve profitability through model sales alone, or whether it will need to rely on infrastructure monetization.

Regulatory scrutiny of AI: xAI faces the same regulatory environment as other AI companies, including potential regulation under the EU AI Act, scrutiny from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and ongoing debates about AI safety. The company's integration with X also raises data privacy questions, as Grok has access to X's user data for training and inference.

Environmental concerns: xAI's data centers in Memphis consume enormous amounts of electricity and water for cooling. Local residents and environmental groups have raised concerns about the impact on Memphis's power grid and water supply. The Colossus and Colossus II facilities collectively draw approximately 1 gigawatt of power.