Elon Musk‘s xAI artificial intelligence firm has acquired X – the social media platform formally known as Twitter – for $33billion (£25.5billion).
The all-stock deal announced on Friday (March 28) values xAI at $80billion and X at $33billion. Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter in 2022.
“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined,” Musk wrote on X, announcing the transaction. “Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent.”
The move may be aimed at protecting the investors who helped purchase X from losing money. Both X and xAI are privately held and share some major investors as well as significant resources.
Per the Guardian, Musk did not ask investors for approval but told them that the two companies had been collaborating closely and the integration would ease his ability to train his AI model Grok – a prominent feature on X.
xAI has used data from posts on X to train its models.
“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,” Musk wrote.
Musk’s xAI startup was launched less than two years ago and recently raised $10bn in a funding round that valued the company at $75bn, as per the Guardian.
Musk bought Twitter in 2022 for $44bn. Once the acquisition closed, he declared, “the bird is freed” – a reference to the platform’s bird-themed branding prior to him turning it into X.
Upon his takeover, he gutted the company’s workforce, including firing numerous top executives, and implemented a string of changes, such as the removal of legacy verified blue ticks and stopping the site from displaying news story headlines.
The tech titan and world’s wealthiest man has also been consolidating his political power in recent months through his involvement with Donald Trump. He heads the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, responsible for cost-cutting.
In other Elon Musk-related news, last month a poster popped up in London depicting a Tesla, urging people not to buy one of the billionaire’s “Swasticars”. Spotted on the side of a bus stop in Bethnal Green, East London, the poster leads with a banner reading: “Goes from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds”.
The image also shows Musk photoshopped into a Tesla – the electric car company for which he is CEO – while performing his now-infamous gesture from Donald Trump’s inauguration rally in January. At the event, the billionaire slapped his chest with his right hand and flung his arm diagonally upwards in what many onlookers have condemned as being reminiscent of a Nazi salute.
Campaign group Everyone Hates Elon appears to have taken credit for the poster, sharing a photo of the banner being installed on the bus stop. “Be a shame if these popped up around the world,” they wrote on Instagram, before sharing a link to a GoFundMe campaign, promising to send a PDF of the poster to anyone who wants one
Many figures from the entertainment world spoke out against the gesture, including Grimes – the musician who was previously in a relationship with Musk and shares multiple children with him – who distanced herself from him online. My Chemical Romance’s Frank Iero also called him out online, and Green Day also took aim at the billionaire while on stage in South Africa, changing the lyrics to ‘American Idiot’ to take a jab at him.
More recently, Musk came under fire for amplifying claims that Netflix’s Adolescence was based on the Southport murderer, despite its filming beginning before the tragedy occurred.
Elsewhere, his estranged daughter Vivian Wilson referred to him as a “pathetic man-child” after he claimed she “died”.