Elon Musk Says xAI Has Purchased X, Formerly Known As Twitter, For $33 Billion

Musk announced the acquisition Friday evening.

Elon Musk said Friday his artificial intelligence startup, xAI, has acquired his social media platform, X, for $33 billion in an all-stock transaction.

Key Facts

Musk announced the deal in a Friday post, saying it valued xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion, or $45 billion if the social network’s $12 billion in debt is included.

Musk, who purchased X for $44 billion in 2022, when it was known as Twitter, said the acquisition entails the combination of xAI and X’s “data, models, compute, distribution and talent.”

The two Musk-owned companies already have plenty of overlap, with X’s AI chatbot, Grok, being developed by xAI, and all xAI staffers being X employees, at least on paper, according to The Verge.

An $80 billion valuation for xAI places it somewhat closer to rival AI company OpenAI, which is currently valued at $157 billion and is close to finalizing a SoftBank-led funding round that will boost its valuation to a whopping $300 billion, according to Bloomberg.

Forbes Valuation

We estimate Musk’s net worth at $342.9 billion, making him the wealthiest person in the world and placing him well ahead of Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos’ and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s new worths, which are $209.2 billion and $199.5 billion, respectively.

Key Background

Musk overhauled the brand of Twitter after buying it for $44 billion about three years ago, renaming the platform X, introducing changes to its policies and features and slashing 80% of the company’s workforce. A year after Musk’s takeover, X suffered from an advertiser exodus and a massive reduction in value, with its valuation dropping to $16.9 billion. The fleeing of advertisers was triggered after Musk approved of an antisemitic tweet and then claimed advertisers who were “blackmailing” him with money should “go f*** themselves.” Since then, Musk has become one of President Donald Trump’s largest backers and closest advisers, using the social platform to boost his increasingly right-wing politics. X is poised to record its first year of ad revenue growth since Musk purchased the platform and is projected to generate $1.3 billion in U.S. advertising sales this year, Bloomberg reported, citing research firm Emarketer.