Elon Musk announced Friday that his artificial intelligence startup, xAI, would acquire his social media platform, X, in a deal valuing the network at about $33B. Musk said xAI would pay $45B for X while assuming $12B in outstanding debt left over from his 2022 purchase of the company.
The move is the culmination of recent efforts by Musk to leverage X as a source of data to train large language models, most notably the xAI-owned Grok—the latest model of which can be used within the X ecosystem (see comparison of LLMs). The company also rapidly built a massive server farm outside Memphis, Tennessee, dedicated to training its AI models, amassing a reported 200,000 AI-specific processors in about seven months. It remains to be seen how or if the acquisition will change the user experience on X.
Separately, Musk has recently split his time between his companies and political efforts, joining a rally in support of Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel (R) last night. The Tuesday election has become a proxy for the national political climate and has drawn $81M in spending, a record for a judicial race.