Elon Musk’s xAI just bought X, formerly Twitter

In a surprise move, one of Elon Musk’s private companies, xAI, just bought another of his private companies, X, in an all-stock deal.

Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and other private companies, announced the deal in a post on X. The transaction values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45 billion less $12 billion in debt), he said. In 2022, Musk paid $44 billion, including debt, for what was then Twitter.

Reporting by Bloomberg and the Financial Times earlier this month said the social media platform was valued at $32 billion and $44 billion, respectively. xAI had been valued at $50 billion late last year.

This seems like a big price tag for a rearranging of corporate structures, but when you’re the richest person on the planet with relatively infinite money, and you own two companies and want to smash them together, you can probably make it happen however you want. Remember, Musk did this with Tesla and its sister company, SolarCity, even when both were public companies, back in 2016.

“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent. This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach,” Musk posted on X.

The companies were already highly integrated. xAI trains its artificial intelligence models on content posted by X users. X users can use xAI’s Grok chatbot free of charge. And investors who backed Musk’s acquisition of X received a 25% stake in xAI. Musk’s six companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, as well as his extragovernmental organization, the Department of Government Efficiency, already share plenty of staff and resources, in addition to leadership.