Elon Musk Sells Social Media Site X to His AI Company xAI for a Staggering $33 Billion
Billionaire Elon Musk He declared on Friday that he has offloaded the social media platform X, previously recognized as Twitter after acquiring it more than two years back, to his AI firm xAI for a total of $33 billion (€30.5 billion), structured entirely through stock transfer.
As both firms are privately owned, they aren’t obligated to share their financial details with the general public.
Musk, who leads both the aerospace manufacturer SpaceX and the automotive firm Tesla, stated in an X posting that this step will "unleash significant potential through merging xAI’s sophisticated AI skills and knowledge with X’s extensive outreach."
"xAI and X’s futures are closely linked. We’re taking an official step today to merge our data, models, computing power, distribution channels, and expertise," Musk announced.
"The merged entity will provide more intelligent and significant experiences for billions of individuals while adhering to our fundamental objective of pursuing truth and enhancing understanding," he stated.
Musk stated that the transaction pegs xAI at $80 billion (€74 billion) and X at $33 billion (€30.5 billion).
Ambitions for xAI
The technology tycoon originally from South Africa, who acts as an adviser to President Donald Trump leading the informal DOGE division, bought the site In 2022, it was sold to Twitter for $44 billion (€40 billion), downsized its workforce, altered its rules regarding hate speech, misinformation, and user verification, and then rebranded as X.
He launched xAI a year later.
Musk stated on X that since its establishment two years ago, xAI has swiftly emerged as one of the premier AI laboratories globally, developing models and data centers at an unparalleled pace and magnitude,
In December, Musk declared that the AI startup plans to expand its supercomputer named 'Colossus.' This move aims to compete with competitors such as OpenAI by adding more graphical processing units (GPUs). The increase in GPUs will enable them to create new AI models at accelerated speeds.
It remains unclear whether this move will make a difference for X users since xAI already utilizes data from their posts to train its AI models, and paying X users can access its AI chatbot. Grok .
