quite a self-serving ask from openAI isnt it? didnt they recently also changed from being non-profit to for-profit?
Why does xAI need to raise money at all? Elon should have plenty right?
Why not let others bear a piece of the risk?
It's actually quite a common thing in all kinds of markets. For example real estate investors often use other external credit (like from banks) even though they could easily pay for the real estate by themselves entirely.
The vast, vast majority of rich people don't have tons of liquid capital sitting around. Most of Elon's wealth is in stock that would tank if he sold it.
And you always want to diversify investment.
This is why Bill Gates is in a different tier of billionaire. He's super diversified from his Microsoft shares at this point after slowly selling for years, compared to Elon and others.
Bill lost a lot of money under a couple of philanthropists’ spell (Melinda and Warren). but you have to start spending at some point. Elon is throwing away his wealth into space… Mark is threw away a bunch into augmented reality…
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This is pretty par for course for startups. I've seen companies that raised money ask their VCs to not to invest in competitors many many times.