The eccentric billionaire made official on Friday the acquisition of his own social network X (formerly Twitter) by his start-up xAI, valuing the whole thing at more than $110 billion. Elon Musk continues to consolidate its tech empire. On Friday, March 28, it announced that xAI, its artificial intelligence company, had acquired X, the social network it had already purchased in late 2022 for $44 billion. The all-stock transaction values X at $33 billion excluding debt, according to Musk. The deal aims to more closely integrate artificial intelligence into the platform, notably through Grok, the chatbot launching in late 2023.
With this merger, xAI is now valued at $80 billion, a colossal figure for a company created only a year earlier in response to the ChatGPT breakthrough. For Elon Musk, the goal is clear: to make X the large-scale testing ground for his AI, fueled by millions of real-time conversations. More than 600 million users use X, according to the billionaire, who did not specify whether these were active users. The idea is to combine "the data, AI models, computing capabilities, and human resources" of the two entities to create "smarter and more profitable" services, Musk explains.
The founder of Tesla and SpaceX also intends to make this merger a political project: Grok, his chatbot, claims an anti-woke tone, faithful to the increasingly conservative line of his boss, close to Donald TrumpHaving become a key player in the re-elected president's campaign, Musk was even appointed to head a commission tasked with "reforming government efficiency," a synonym for a massive administrative purge. Through this merger, Musk wants to accelerate "human progress."
