SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A group of investors will put up $6 billion to fund development of artificial intelligence by Elon Musk's xAI.

The company said on its website Sunday that the Series B funding round will be used to take xAI's first products to market and speed up research. xAI said it has made "significant strides" during the past year in developing the technology, which will continue in the coming months.

Investors in the latest round include Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding.

Musk wrote on the social media site X that before the investment, xAI had a valuation of $18 billion.

The funding should help Musk's company compete in a race to develop artificial intelligence against Microsoft and Open AI, which created Chat GPT.

Musk announced formation of the company in July of last year and released its artificial intelligence chatbot called Grok in November.