Masterful gambit, sir. Twitter has been sold off yet again, with it leaving Elon Musk's hands to… end up back in Elon Musk's hands. Rather than selling it off to an outside buyer after its dramatic decline in value, Musk merged it with his own AI company, xAI, creating sort of a Frankenstein of mass disinformation. Hilariously, the deal valued Twitter at the full $44 billion and change (minus debt) Musk paid for it, despite evidence to the contrary. Then again, when you're just passing money from one hand to the other, you can slap whatever arbitrary number you want on it. Per CNBC:
"xAI and X's futures are intertwined," Musk, the world's richest person, wrote in a post on X. "Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent."
He added that the merger would, "unlock immense potential by blending xAI's advanced AI capability and expertise with X's massive reach." The purchase price, he said, was $45 billion less $12 billion in debt.
Because both companies are privately held and controlled by Musk, the transaction likely amounts to a stock swap, with X investors getting paid out in xAI shares. The companies have a number of mutual investors, including venture firms Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, as well as Fidelity Management, Vy Capital and Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Holding Co.
You may remember xAI for creating an AI that hates Elon Musk and not much else. One shudders to imagine what "potential" Musk could be talking about – besides maybe feeding millions of Tweets to his language models, so clean them out now if you haven't already. For everyone's sake, hopefully it won't be anything like his recent work in government.
Previously:
• Elon Musk made fool of by Assassin's Creed social media team
• Hoping to avoid trouble when buying an election, Elon Musk deletes a tweet
• Musk calls pilot the R-word over astronaut delay — then delays SpaceX flight to ISS
