In a surprising announcement, Elon Musk announced the sale of social media platform X to his xAI startup for $45 billion.
In a surprising announcement made Friday afternoon in a tweet, Elon Musk said that he sold social media platform X, formerly Twitter, to his AI startup firm xAI for $45 billion in stock. The deal includes $12 billion in debt owed by X. With the transaction, xAI has a valuation of $80 billion said Musk in the tweet. That is double xAI’s valuation of $40 billion used in a recent funding round that raised $6 billion for the startup that Elon launched in 2023.
You might recall that Musk purchased Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion. As soon as the deal closed in October of that year, Musk fired executives including some he was forced to rehire to keep the operation running. After getting off to a rough start over verification checkmarks and losing some key advertisers including Apple, things have settled down.
