Elon Musk’s oft-documented fondness for naming companies variations of “X” may have had its “Who’s on first?” moment this week with the announcement that xAI has acquired X, formerly known as Twitter. (This is not to be confused with the recent sale of Twitter’s old signage.) What does it mean for one Musk-owned company to acquire another — especially given that xAI’s Grok will already be familiar to users of the social network in question?
What are the specifics of the deal?
In a post on X on Friday, Musk described the acquisition as an all-stock transaction. “The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45B less $12B debt),” he wrote.
“This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach,” Musk wrote. “The combined company will deliver smarter, more meaningful experiences to billions of people while staying true to our core mission of seeking truth and advancing knowledge. This will allow us to build a platform that doesn’t just reflect the world but actively accelerates human progress.”
Is this a surprise?
This news isn’t exactly a shock. Earlier this year, The Verge’s Kylie Robison reported that the formal boundaries between X and xAI were already getting pretty blurry. “xAI’s takeover of the platform once known as Twitter is so unmistakable that even its branding has crept into X’s most visible real estate,” Robison wrote in January.
In the same article, Robison noted that “[o]n paper, all xAI staffers are also X employees” and that the two companies have shared an office since last fall. There’s also the matter of the selling point of xAI, at least to investors: the fact that it uses the vast archive of the former Twitter to train itself. Journalist Micah Lee has a more in-depth look at how the interaction between the two systems works.
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If you’re getting a sense of deja vu from this whole thing, there’s a good reason for it. Many tech reporters, including Engadget’s Ian Carlos Campbell, noted the similarity between this acquisition and the moment in 2016 where Tesla acquired the solar energy company Solar City.
Are there memes?
Need you ask? On Friday evening, Musk retweeted a photo of two Musks shaking hands — one labeled “X” and one labeled “xAI” — all while a third Musk looked on.
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