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Elon Musk XAI’s artificial intelligence group bought the X social media platform for $ 45 billion because the billionaire entrepreneur brings together two of his flagship companies.
“The future of Xai and X are intertwined,” said Musk on Friday evening, adding that he would combine the data, the models, the computing power, the distribution and the talents of the two companies.
Musk said the All-Stock agreement assessed XAI at $ 80 billion. He did not reveal details about how the agreement was structured. XAI obtained an evaluation of $ 45 billion in a private financing tour of $ 5 billion at the end of last year.
The agreement announced on Friday, which includes a debt of $ 12 billion, X values slightly higher than the price of $ 44 billion that Musk paid to ensure that private enterprise in October 2022 and comes after a fundraising of $ 1 billion this month.
He highlights the rebound in fortune for X, which collapsed after the control of Musk while advertisers withdrew their spending from the platform by citing the concerns about his approach to moderation.
A group of seven banks from Wall Street has also sold almost every $ 12.5 billion in loans that Musk used to finance his Twitter takeover, which he later renamed X in 2022.
The lenders had been struggling with the debt while Musk sought to turn around the X operations while investors in shares have redesigned their issues in the platform at spectacular discounts.
The interests of investors in loans improved in the weeks following the electoral victory of Donald Trump in November, given the proximity of the billionaire with the new administration as a confidant of the president and the head of the so-called Department of Government efficiency intention to reduce the government’s administrative formalities.
X investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, 8VC, Goanna Capital and Fidelity Investments. Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity are also investors in Xai.
Last year, Musk granted investors who supported its acquisition of Twitter 25% of XAI shares, helping to increase the value of the social media platform. We did not know how this configuration will be taken into account in the Friday agreement.
A person familiar with the agreement said that he was partly forged to help Musk establish value for his private companies. They added that Musk’s main external investors had supported the transaction, which had been underway for months, and expected it to bring greater clarity on the functioning of the two groups in tandem.
Musk launched his XAI start-up in 2023 to “understand the true nature of the universe” and challenge the domination of the Openai of Sam Altman. Since then, he has launched his own chatbot, Grok, and has increased his data center extension with his colossus supercombed cluster.
“This combination will unlock an immense potential by mixing the advanced capacity and expertise of XAI AI with the massive range of X,” said Musk on Friday about connection X. “This will allow us to build a platform that does not only reflect the world but which actively accelerates human progress.”
Already, X data, which, according to Musk, has more than 600 million active users, has been used to form Grok. In turn, more sophisticated grok features are offered to pay premium subscribers from X.
Additional James Fontanella-Khan report in New York
