As we are fond of pointing out, the endpoints one chooses for a timeline changes the appearance of the presentation and oftentimes is a handy reveal of the writer's biases and intent. For example, yesterday, June 30, Tesla marked the fifteenth anniversary of it's $17.00 IPO. Accounting for the 3:1 and 5:1 stock splits $300 equates to $4500.00 on the original shares.
On the other hand there are people who begin their timeline at the stock's December 2024 all-time high print, $488.54.
And on the third hand are people whose reference period is one year, in which the stock is up 49%.
And on to xAI. Lifted in toto from TechCrunch via Yahoo Finance, July 1:
Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has raised $10 billion in debt and equity, Morgan Stanley confirmed on Monday.
In a post on X, the financial giant said xAI had raised $5 billion in debt and another $5 billion in a separate strategic equity transaction.
“The combination of debt and equity reduces the overall cost of capital and substantially expands pools of capital available to xAI. The proceeds will support xAI’s continued development of cutting-edge AI solutions, including one of the world’s largest data center [sic] and its flagship Grok platform,” Morgan Stanley wrote.
xAI did not immediately return a request for comment outside regular business hours.
This latest funding follows a $6 billion round that the company raised in December from a slate of big name investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Blackrock, Fidelity, Lightspeed, MGX, Morgan Stanley, OIA, QIA, Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Nvidia, AMD, and Kingdom Holdings, a Saudi conglomerate.
The new equity round brings xAI’s total capital raised to about $17 billion.
Back to endpoints, here's statistician Marge, mother of President of the United States Lisa Simpson with a practical example:
