xAI closes $20B Series E weeks before folding into SpaceX

The round was upsized from an initial $15 billion target after demand from Nvidia, Cisco, Fidelity, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, Valor Equity Partners and Saudi Arabia's HUMAIN. The money followed a $10 billion raise in September 2025, split between $5 billion of debt and $5 billion of equity. Bloomberg reported that xAI was burning close to $1 billion per month against roughly $500 million in annualized revenue.

The merger closed on February 2 as a share exchange. Each xAI share converted into 0.1433 SpaceX shares. SpaceX was valued at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion. That put xAI's price about 9% above the Series E mark. Investors in the round ended up holding SpaceX stock, which later listed: one tracker reports a June 12 Nasdaq IPO that raised $75 billion.

For founders, the lesson is about scale. Anthropic raised $30 billion at a $380 billion valuation days after xAI's merger, so frontier-model funding now runs on a different track from the $100M to $500M rounds at most startups. A lab with heavy compute costs may find its most workable exit inside a larger balance sheet. Everyone else is competing for the same strategic backers, Nvidia included.