Originally appeared on E! Online
A little bird told us more changes are afoot for the company formerly known as Twitter.
Elon Musk—who bought Twitter in 2022 and changed the social media platform’s name to X the following year—revealed that his artificial intelligence startup xAI has acquired the brand in a lucrative, all-stock deal.
“The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45B less $12B debt),” Musk wrote in a March 28 post to X. “Since its founding two years ago, xAI has rapidly become one of the leading AI labs in the world, building models and data centers at unprecedented speed and scale.”
He continued, “X is the digital town square where more than 600M active users go to find the real-time source of ground truth and, in the last two years, has been transformed into one of the most efficient companies in the world, positioning it to deliver scalable future growth.”
More than one year after Grok—an AI-powered chatbot created by xAI that’s similar to ChatGPT—was launched on X, Elon said it was officially time to “take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent.”
“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined,” he explained. “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.”
The Tesla CEO ended his message thanking the teams from both companies for their hard work and dedication, noting, “This is just the beginning.”
After Musk’s announcement, CEO of X Linda Yaccarino echoed his outlook, reposting his update with her own words, writing, “The future could not be brighter.”
As for how X users felt about the business deal? There were chirps all around.
“I’m so curious as to why X folded into xAI and not the other way around,” one user wrote. “It seems like X has the broader base as a platform and that xAI would literally just be a medium/small feature on X.”
Another simply commented, “Wow. Didn’t see this coming.”
While Elon’s business portfolio continues to expand, so does his family. Read on for a deep dive into the many branches of his family tree.
