Elon Musk's xAI Set to Rent Oracle's AI Servers for $10 Bln

Oracle Corp. ( ORCL ) is close to a $10 billion cloud contract with Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup, xAI. Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison announced last September that the company had a deal to provide cloud infrastructure to xAI to train artificial intelligence models. The talks are ongoing and there is no guarantee that the two companies will reach an agreement. XAI was set to close a $6 billion funding round, valuing the company at about $18 billion. The shares gained 3.7% to $120.68 in New York after earlier hitting $122.55. The stock has increased 10% this year through Monday's close.

The deal would make xAI one of Oracle's largest customers, as Musk looks to raise funds for xAI in an attempt to rival the AI offerings of OpenAI and Google. The cloud negotiations are ongoing and there is no guarantee that the two companies will sign a deal. XAI was reportedly in talks to raise $3 billion in a round last month, which would have valued the company at $18 billion. Oracle and Elon Musk did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Oracle ( ORCL ) released an update to its database technology earlier this month intended to make it more useful with AI. XAI is the largest H100 customer at Oracle, using more than 15,000 of the AI chips, which are made by Nvidia. Last month, Musk said xAI would launch an enhanced version of its chatbot Grok to early testers and existing users on his social media platform X.