
Switch off the editor’s digest free of charge
Roula Khalaf, editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company Xai is approaching a debt contract of $ 9.3 billion, since investors exceeded the spitting of the billionaire with President Donald Trump, who had complicated the effort to increase capital.
Investors have given an orders of more than $ 5 billion in a bond and a loan offer and granted the company’s bankers at Morgan Stanley that they can conclude the round of funding, according to the people who have been informed in this matter.
Xai has informed investors that in addition to the new debt package, it should also complete a capital increase of $ 4.3 billion, adding the firepower to create data centers in order to compete with competitors including Openai.
The company, founded in 2023, competes with Openai, Anthropic, Google and others, to develop and commercialize increasingly demanding AI tools. Musk’s company started its own chatbot, Grok, as a disrespectful alternative to Chatgpt and Google’s Gemini and claimed that it would be more truth than a politically correct narrative.
Musk combined Xai in March with its social media company X in a deal that estimated the combined company with USD 113 billion. The group recently Started a secondary offerin which employees can sell their shares to investors to validate the Price Day set by Muschus in March.
The new fundraising was caught in the crossfire Between Musk and Trump at the beginning of this month when the two men attacked each other on social media. Since then, Musk has said that he regretted some of his contributions about Trump.
The close relationships between the two men, Muschus described themselves as the “first buddy” of the President, were seen as blessings for investors who took care of Xai.
musk Had advertised his close relationship with the White House in his playing field to investors and claimed that the connections could help him change rivals such as Openaai and Anthropic, two people familiar with the matter.
The dissolution of Musk’s relationship with Trump again threw new questions for investors and dampened the enthusiasm of some, with some of the Financial Times announced that they had decided against participation in the deal.
Nevertheless, several large money managers in the debt package of $ 5 billion looked worth, whereby the bonds were expected to be rated with a return of around 12 percent. It is expected that the financing between loans with fixed and floating rates and a bond will be divided. The investment group TPG Angelo Gordon agreed to anchor the deal and undertook to invest 1 billion USD, one person.
The obligations are due on Tuesday and it is expected that it will cost later this week.
Xai did not answer a request for comments. Morgan Stanley and TPG rejected a statement.
The loan package and the increase in equity give the company the capital it takes to build new data centers in order to compete with the competitors. Xai and its competitors burn money to equip data centers with chips that supply their large voice models with electricity.
Xai told investors that according to a person familiar with the matter, it lost $ 341 million in front of interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. However, the company stated high projections for its future and predicted EBITDA of more than $ 13 billion in 2029.
In comparison, Openaai predicted sales of USD 125 billion in 2029, although the company still expects until then.