• Elon Musk's OpenAI rival, xAI, says it just raised $6 billion in funding from investors.
• The AI startup is backed by VCs like Sequoia Capital and Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holding.
• Musk said xAI's pre-money valuation was $18 billion.

Elon Musk's xAI just took a critical step in building up its war chest to take on Sam Altman's OpenAI.

The AI startup said in a blog post on Sunday that it had raised $6 billion for their Series B funding round.

The company, which is barely a year old, counts among its investors prominent VCs like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital as well as Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holding.

"There will be more to announce in the coming weeks," Musk said in an X post on Monday morning.

The mercurial billionaire said in a subsequent X post that xAI's pre-money valuation was $18 billion. The financial term refers to the value of a company before any equity investment is made.

Sunday's announcement marks the first time xAI has talked about its fundraising efforts. Musk had repeatedly denied earlier reports from Bloomberg and the Financial Times about xAI's outreach to investors.

The influx of funding will be essential for Musk, who has envisioned xAI as an alternative to OpenAI, a company he'd cofounded with Altman. Musk left the OpenAI board in 2018.

The ChatGPT maker was valued at $80 billion or more following a deal that allows staff to cash out their shares, The New York Times reported in February, citing people familiar with the deal.

Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in February, where he accused the company of violating its nonprofit mission by partnering with Microsoft.

A year ago, Musk expressed disappointment in what OpenAI had become, saying that it was "not what I intended at all."

"OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it 'Open' AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft," Musk wrote on X.

• Thai Union CEO Thiraphong Chansiri doesn't want to have anything to do with lobsters anymore.
• His company assumed a majority stake in Red Lobster in 2020, which filed for bankruptcy in May.
• "Other people stop eating beef. I'm going to stop eating lobster," Chansiri said in February.

Thai Union CEO Thiraphong Chansiri, 58, might have once been a big believer in the Red Lobster seafood chain.

But owning Red Lobster left such a "big scar" on Chansiri that he told investors in February that he was swearing off lobsters forever.

"Other people stop eating beef. I'm going to stop eating lobster," Chansiri said in an earnings call — a possible reference to how some followers of Buddhism prefer not to consume beef and other meat products.

On May 19, Red Lobster said in a statement that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after it sustained major operating losses in 2023. Red Lobster said its restaurants will "remain open and operating as usual during the Chapter 11 process."

Chansiri, a Thai business executive, might have studied business administration in the US, but an ancient Chinese practice known as feng shui appeared to have a huge influence on how he ran Red Lobster as well.

Feng shui, which means "wind" and "water" in Chinese, focuses on achieving harmony between an environment and its inhabitants.

Former Red Lobster executives told CNN in a story published Saturday that Chansiri consulted a feng shui consultant named Angel when he visited their headquarters in 2022.

Chansiri decided to leave Red Lobster's executive offices empty after Angel said the rooms had bad feng shui, CNN reported, citing a former Red Lobster executive.

Thai Union didn't respond to questions raised by CNN about the allegations raised in their story. Representatives for Thai Union didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

Much speculation has swirled around why Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy. For one, the seafood chain's ill-fated decision to make its "Endless Shrimp" deal a daily promotion backfired, leaving it with operating losses of $11 million and $12.5 million in the third and fourth quarters of 2023 respectively.

But Red Lobster's fall also cast a spotlight on the damage private equity firms can inflict on portfolio companies.

In 2014, longtime Red Lobster owner Darden Restaurants sold the company to Golden Gate Capital for $2.1 billion. The investment firm financed the purchase by selling off Red Lobster's real-estate holdings. Red Lobster's operation costs went up as it now had to lease its restaurants instead.

Then, in 2020, Thai Union assumed majority ownership of Red Lobster after Golden Gate Capital sold its remaining equity stake to them.

But the change in ownership brought little relief to Red Lobster. The company has seen frequent turnover in its executive ranks.

In fact, the company just onboarded its latest CEO. Turnaround expert Jonathan Tibus was named CEO in March, making him Red Lobster's third CEO since 2021.

Last week, Tibus questioned the "outsized influence" that Thai Union had on Red Lobster's shrimp purchasing. Besides owning them, Thai Union is also Red Lobster's key seafood supplier.

Tibus accused Red Lobster's then-interim CEO Paul Kenny of straining Red Lobster's supply chain when he axed two shrimp suppliers "in apparent coordination with Thai Union."

A Thai union spokesperson previously told BI's Meghan Morris that Tibus' allegations are "meritless."

"Thai Union has a been a supplier to Red Lobster for more than 30 years, and we intend for that relationship to continue," the company said.

• Western nations criticize China's cheap exports, citing global economic threats.
• The US, Germany, and France lead the accusations against China's export practices.
• China has defended its production, while industrial profits rise, likely intensifying trade tensions.

Western countries are lining up to call out China for its barrage of cheap exports that are flooding the world's markets.

The US has been leading the criticism in recent months, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen broaching the issue last month during her trip to China. A week later, Europe's top economy echoed the same concerns when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited China.

Over the weekend, France — the European Union's second-largest economy — also hit out at China.

"We have an issue with the economic model in which China is producing more and more cheaper industrial devices because it could be a threat not only for the EU, not only for the US, but for the global world economy," finance minister Bruno Le Maire said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. "We need to address that issue."

Le Maire's complaint came after finance chiefs from the Group of Seven, or G7, stepped up their game with a sharp rebuke to China following a meeting in the resort town of Stresa in Italy.

"While reaffirming our interest in a balanced and reciprocal collaboration, we express concerns about China's comprehensive use of non-market policies and practices that undermines our workers, industries, and economic resilience," wrote the G7 finance ministers and central bank governors in a statement on Saturday. "We will continue to monitor the potential negative impacts of overcapacity and will consider taking steps to ensure a level playing field, in line with World Trade Organization (WTO) principles."

China pushes back on criticism, industrial profits rose in April

Beijing has consistently resisted the West's criticism that it is dumping cheap goods on the world market. Chinese authorities say the West's accusations are protectionist and aimed at containing China's economic growth.

"It cannot be labeled 'overcapacity' simply because a country's production capacity exceeds its domestic demand," said He Yadong, a spokesperson for China's Commerce Ministry earlier this month.

He added that many developed nations have been exporting a massive amount of goods for a long time and should not criticize China for exporting too many new energy products — which the West is taking aim at.

China is producing a lot of new energy products as the country navigates a painful economic transition, from one reliant on real estate and low-cost manufacturing to the hot "new three" sectors of electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar panels. The West is also eyeing those fast-rising industries.

In April, profits at China's industrial companies rose 4% from a year ago, reversing a drop in March, according to official statistics released on Monday.

Industrial profits also rose about 4% in the first four months of the year from a year ago, thanks to a 76% surge in the earnings of computer, communication, and other electric equipment, according to the statement. In comparison, profits at general equipment manufacturers rose just 6% from January to April.

While profits at industrial enterprises recovered steadily from January to April, "domestic demand remains insufficient, and the external demand environment remains complex and severe," Yu Weining, a government statistician, said in a statement.

The new data from China is likely to add even more tensions to the trade tiff between Beijing and the West.

Avoiding 'China shock' 2.0

Earlier this month, President Joe Biden unveiled sharply higher tariffs on a range of imports from China, including electric vehicle batteries and semiconductor chips.

Meanwhile, the European Commission launched an ongoing probe into whether EV imports from China benefited from illegal subsidization that, in turn, threatens to damage the EU's EV manufacturers. If this is found to be true, the EU could impose tariffs on these imports.

The West's hawkish moves toward China now follow the East Asian giant's breakneck industrialization to its position as the factory of the world over the past four decades. That quick ascendance wiped out jobs and decimated communities elsewhere — a phenomenon three researchers termed "China shock."

Now, the West wants to get ahead of the curve, particularly in the hot green and new energy sectors.

"Fundamentally, Biden administration officials are trying to avoid repeating the mistakes of past decades when, they believe, the United States (and its allies) did not do enough to counter China's unfair trade practices until it was too late and Chinese products flooded markets and cost jobs," wrote Josh Lipsky, the senior director of the Atlantic Council's GeoEconomics Center on May 14.

"It's not that China hasn't been creating overcapacity for decades; it's that the sectors China is now doing it in are considered critical for national security. That is what is driving so much of this reaction," said Lipsky, who is also a former adviser to the International Monetary Fund.

• MPs for the Baltic States have been warning German officials that they might send troops to Ukraine.
• Their condition would be if Russia achieves a breakthrough in Ukraine, Der Spiegel reported.
• They issued the warning as part of an argument for Germany to support Ukraine more aggressively, per the outlet.

Members of parliament for the Baltic States warned German officials last week that their governments are poised to send troops to Ukraine if Russia achieves considerable gains, Der Spiegel reported.

The German outlet reported on Sunday that the Baltic officials issued the warning while speaking with representatives for Berlin at the Lennart Meri Conference in Tallinn.

Der Spiegel neither named any of the officials nor identified which countries they represented, but reported that they raised concerns about Chancellor Olaf Scholz's current policy toward the war.

Scholz has been denying Ukraine permission to use German-supplied weapons in strikes on Russian soil, in line with Washington's stance of not allowing Kyiv to use donated weaponry for attacks beyond Ukraine's own borders.

According to Der Spiegel, the Baltic officials were concerned that such policies created a half-hearted attempt to help Kyiv and might allow Russia to gain the upper hand in Ukraine.

They said that if Moscow does gain significant ground in eastern Ukraine, their governments and Poland could move troops into the conflict zone even before Russia deploys its soldiers on their borders.

The argument from the officials, according to Der Spiegel, was that treating Moscow with restraint could backfire and instead create an escalation.

Like Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic States — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — were previously part of the Soviet Union.

They've been some of NATO's most vocal members in pushing the rest of the alliance to intensify support for Kyiv, fearing that Russian leader Vladimir Putin may seek to continue his conquest in the region if he seizes Ukraine.

Together with France's President Emmanuel Macron, they've repeatedly hinted that they aren't ruling out sending NATO troops to Ukraine.

Officials in Estonia, in particular, recently signaled the possibility of deploying its troops to fill non-combat roles and free up Ukrainians to fight on the front lines. There are concerns that such actions could escalate the conflict quickly into a direct war between NATO and Russia.

Press services for the defense ministries of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Why Russia's western neighbors are getting skittish

The concerns reported by Der Spiegel come as Russia launched a renewed assault in northeastern Ukraine, striking the city of Kharkiv and capturing several settlements in the surrounding region.

Military observers say the Kremlin can't take Kharkiv with the resources it's deployed there so far, but Russia has been shelling the city and inflicting civilian casualties.

On the main front in the east, Ukraine has been struggling for months to hold back a grinding Russian advance after its supplies from the US began to dwindle.

The aid has resumed after months of stalling in Congress, but Kyiv says Western equipment often arrives too late to turn the tide of the war because conditions keep changing.

Meanwhile, Russia stoked alarm among its neighbors last week with a new defense ministry draft proposing changing its maritime borders with Finland and Lithuania in January 2025.

The draft was uploaded to Russia's Registry of Laws website on Tuesday but was later removed.

On Thursday, Tallinn officials said Moscow had removed 24 of 50 buoys marking Russia's borders with Estonia on the Narva River. The officials said Russia has been contesting the buoys' locations.

On Sunday, six NATO nations — Norway, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — said they would construct a unified "drone wall" with unmanned aerial vehicles and more advanced technologies to strengthen their borders.

Their concerns aren't just centered on a full-scale Russian invasion. Finland, for example, said Russia has been trying to overwhelm Finnish border officials with waves of migrants trying to enter its borders.

Norway, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia share land borders with mainland Russia, while Poland and Lithuania share land borders with Belarus, a close ally of the Kremlin.

• China released a simulation video on Friday of how it could strike Taiwan with waves of missiles.
• The clips are a hype montage of CGI and live footage from mock strikes carried out last weekend.
• They showed off the ground-based launchers, jet fighters, and naval ships that China could fire from.

China's Eastern Theater Command on Friday released a simulation video of its missile forces carrying out a mass attack on Taiwan, boasting its land, sea, and air launch capabilities.

The 70-second hype video used a mix of computer-generated animation and live footage to depict warships, land-based rocket launchers, and jet fighters launching waves of missiles at the island.

"Destroy the pillar of Taiwanese independence! Strike the base camp of Taiwanese independence! Cut off the blood flow of Taiwanese independence!" the People's Liberation Army branch wrote in the video.

Animated missiles — dubbed "independence killing weapons" in the video — descend upon a 3D map of Taipei, Hualien, and Kaohsiung, disappearing in GIFs of fireballs.

The video is one of China's most pointed public messages yet on its missile capabilities in a Taiwan scenario.

Beijing's missile forces have developed rapidly in recent years, alarming US officials who are now scrutinizing its arsenals and assets. A chief concern for the Pentagon has been the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force and its ability to strike targets deep in the Indo-Pacific.

The PLARF wouldn't need long-range missiles to hit Taiwan, which is separated from mainland China by a 110-mile strait. But at least several PLARF brigades work with or under the Eastern Theater Command and are armed mostly with short-range and intermediate-range missiles. They're also believed to possess the Dongfeng-21, a hypersonic missile dubbed the "carrier killer."

Taiwan, recognizing the Chinese missile threat, has been stocking up on US-manufactured Patriot missiles.

Friday's missile video was released in tandem with China's series of joint live-fire drills around Taiwan beginning Thursday, its largest such exercise in over a year near the self-governed island.

The "Joint Sword" exercise lasted two days, according to Chinese authorities, who said it was a coordinated effort by its land, sea, air, and missile forces as "punishment" for "separatist" acts in Taiwan.

Taiwan's defense ministry said Beijing deployed 33 aircraft, 16 Coast Guard vessels, and 15 Navy ships.

The drills came three days after Lai Ching-te of Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party was sworn in as the island's president. Lai and his party, which governed Taiwan under previous leader Tsai Ing-wen, have focused on resisting Beijing, angering Chinese officials who say Taipei is teetering toward their red line of declaring independence.

Tensions between Taipei and Beijing have continually escalated since Lai was elected in January.

Two months later, China announced that it would increase defense spending by 7.2% to $230 billion this year, while declaring it would deter Taiwan from "separatist activities."