April 3 (Reuters) – Elon Musk is requiring banks and other advisers working on SpaceX’s planned IPO to buy subscriptions to Grok, his artificial intelligence chatbot, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Some banks have agreed to spend tens of millions of dollars a year on the chatbot and have begun integrating it into their IT systems, the report said.
Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup are serving as active bookrunners, or the lead banks managing the deal, Reuters reported earlier this week.
Musk and SpaceX did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America declined to comment. Morgan Stanley did not immediately respond to Reuters’ queries.
The Starbase, Texas-headquartered rocket maker boosted its target initial public offering valuation above $2 trillion, according to a Bloomberg News report a day earlier, setting the stage for what could become the largest stock market listing on record.
The company aims to raise a record $75 billion, which would dwarf previous mega-IPOs such as Saudi Aramco in 2019 and Alibaba in 2014.
(Reporting by Savyata Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Mark Porter)
