Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI has acquired X. This is stated in Musk’s post. In addition to similar names and owners, the companies are already connected through the Grok chatbot, which is integrated into X.
X was acquired by xAI in an all-stock transaction. “The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45 billion minus $12 billion in debt),” Musk writes. “The futures of xAI and X are intertwined.” The companies plan to combine “data, models, computing, distribution, and talent” using X as a social platform to spread “advanced xAI AI capabilities.” The announcement is short on details, but the motivation could be both financial and practical.
X, then Twitter, was acquired by Elon Musk in 2022 for $43 billion. xAI, like many leading AI companies, raises money as often and as quickly as possible. The merger of the two companies, in addition to the vague potential benefits that social media posts could have for AI training, helps to alleviate some of the debt that Musk took on by taking Twitter private. The billionaire pulled off a similar trick in 2016 with Tesla, when the automaker merged with SolarCity for $2.6 billion.
