The social network X has been sold by Elon Musk to… Elon Musk. His AI startup xAI has acquired the former Twitter for $33 billion.
If the sale of OpenAI doesn’t work out, Musk is taking a different approach. He has announced that his AI startup xAI Corp. is acquiring social media company X Corp. (formerly Twitter). This combines two of his biggest projects in a move that he says offers “unprecedented possibilities”.
AI and Distribution
In 2022, Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion and later transformed it into X. A year later, he launched xAI and the AI model Grok as a competitor to OpenAI and ChatGPT. That startup quickly received six billion dollars in fresh investments.
The deal values X at $33 billion (excluding debt), while xAI itself is now worth $80 billion. According to Musk, the acquisition brings together “data, models, computing power, distribution, and talent”. Meanwhile, xAI has raised more than twelve billion dollars, but revenues remain limited for now. In November, according to the Wall Street Journal, the company reportedly told investors it was on track for $100 million in annual revenue.
Acquisition Has Been Brewing for a While
According to earlier reports from The Verge, xAI and X were already sharing personnel, infrastructure, and code. All xAI employees were reportedly using official X laptops and had access to the social platform’s codebase. The acquisition gives xAI a new asset for investors: besides AI, it now also offers access to a billion-dollar market in social media.