Elon Musk has appointed former Morgan Stanley executive Anthony Armstrong as chief financial officer of both his artificial intelligence startup xAI and social media platform X, the Financial Times reported.
Armstrong, who advised Musk during his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter (now X), will take on a central role in overseeing the finances of both ventures. His appointment comes as Musk looks to revive X’s financial health and scale up operations at xAI.
Musk — who also leads Tesla (TSLA), SpaceX (SPACE), and Neuralink — has been aggressively investing in AI infrastructure as competition intensifies with rivals such as Microsoft-backed (MSFT) OpenAI, Alphabet (GOOGL) (GOOG), and Meta Platforms (META), all of which are pouring billions into data centers and model development.
Just last month, xAI secured funding at a $200 billion valuation, making it one of the most valuable startups in the world. However, according to Bloomberg News, the company is reportedly losing around $1 billion per month, largely due to high infrastructure and compute costs.
Most recenttly, xAI unveiled its new reasoning model, known as Grok 4 Fast.