Elon Musk’s xAI Acquires X

X, the app formerly known as Twitter, has been acquired by one of Elon Musk’s tech companies. The last few years have been a rollercoaster for Twitter users. Back in 2022, Elon Musk made an outrageous offer to buy the social media platform for $44 billion in an effort to overhaul it as an “everything app” and reduce restrictions on users. It was a controversial move and had led to a bunch of Twitter competitors like Bluesky and Threads to pop up as users look for a home away from the Musk-owned app.

X/Twitter was also the recent target of an alleged cyberattack, according to Elon, showing increased tensions for the platform. While there are a number of people who love Elon’s Twitter, now known as X, others have hoped that one day he’d relinquish control over the app, especially as he takes on a larger role in politics.

Today, Elon Musk announced that a different entity has acquired X/Twitter, but… it probably won’t make that much of a difference to those who are against Musk’s version of the platform. Musk announced that his own company, xAI, has acquired X. He noted that the combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion minus $12 billion of debt, which actually brings it up to a total of $45 billion. With the debt included, it’s $1 billion more than the original price Elon paid for it back in 2022. He went on to state that xAI is one of the leading AI labs in the world and believes this joint deal will be beneficial for the future of the technology.

“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined,” said Musk. “Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent. This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach. 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.”

In essence, Elon Musk is going to be continuing his push into the AI field and will utilize X/Twitter to achieve results. We’ve already begun seeing this on the app as X has its own AI feature known as Gronk which can produce AI images and even be summoned in the reply section of a tweet to provide further context.

However, results of Gronk’s accuracy when asking for more information isn’t always consistent. There have been instances where someone will ask Gronk what the title of a movie is after seeing a clip of it on X and the AI will respond with an incorrect answer and even sometimes provide multiple answers. We’ll just have to wait and see what other plans Musk has for AI with X going forward.

What do you think of Elon Musk’s version of Twitter/X? Let me know in the comments below.