2 days Ago By Todd Spangler
Wait — Elon Musk just sold X , the social network formerly known as Twitter , to himself? Well, kind of. Musk, in a post on X Friday, said that his artificial-intelligence company, xAI , has acquired X in an all-stock transaction that values X at $33 billion ($45 billion minus $12 billion in debt). The deal gives xAI a valuation of $80 billion, Musk claimed.
Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion and took the company private. What’s going on here? With the sale of X to xAI, Musk is exchanging the investor base of the social network with that of his AI company (some of which the two companies have in common). Equity owners in X included Musk himself, along with Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, investor Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Foundation, Fidelity Investments, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s Kingdom Holdings Ltd.
, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Vy Capital and Sean “Diddy” Combs. The investors in xAI, meanwhile, include Musk, Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, BlackRock, Kingdom Holdings, Lightspeed Venture Partners, MGX, Morgan Stanley, Oman Investment Authority, the Qatar Investment Authority, Sequoia, Valor and Vy Capital. Musk, in his post, said that X has more than 600 million active users.
“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent.” Musk claimed that the combination “will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.
The combined company will deliver smarter, more meaningful experiences to billions of people while staying true to our core mission of seeking truth and advancing knowledge. This will allow us to build a platform that doesn’t just reflect the world but actively accelerates human progress.” In addition to his business activities, which include serving as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk is the head of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Under Musk’s leadership DOGE has engineered mass layoffs and spending cutbacks at U.S. government agencies.
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