What’s going on here? xAI is on a spending spree that’d make even Silicon Valley veterans blush, so maybe think twice before asking the firm’s Grok chatbot for some budgeting tips. What does this mean? Elon Musk’s xAI expects to spend $13 billion this year alone – a sum that’ll surely make you feel better about your overpriced espresso. 💰 The startup is saddled with monstrous infrastructure costs: think data centers, cutting-edge chips, and enough software engineers to launch a hundred chess clubs. 📉 Despite raising $14 billion over the last couple of years, xAI only had $4 billion left at the end of March… and that’s nearly gone now too. 👀 And while rivals like OpenAI are banking billions in revenue, Musk’s firm is predicted to bring in just $500 million this year. So to fill the gap, xAI wants to raise over $9 billion in fresh funding. Why should I care? For markets: The billion-dollar bot. Investors seem happy to finance xAI’s run: big-name backers have helped push the startup’s valuation up to $80 billion. See, Musk has a pretty good track record of creating disruptive brands – like Tesla and SpaceX. Investors, then, will be hoping that his “spend now, profit later” strategy will play out well this time around, too. Zooming out: Cash ‘em if you can. All that spending might be burning a hole in xAI’s pockets, but it’s lining those of chipmakers, cloud giants, and data center builders. And it’s not just American startups splashing the cash: governments across the Middle East have already spent billions on chips and related deals. 📈 That’s lifting the stocks of chipmakers Nvidia and AMD – even as export restrictions keep China’s customers away. 🐣 Those firms won’t be counting their chickens yet, though… and neither should you. Plenty of Middle Eastern megaprojects have failed to, uh, hatch – and rising tensions together with changeable global trade rules aren’t exactly good for business. | 