[HN Gopher] xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B
___________________________________________________________________
xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B
Author : rvz
Score : 206 points
Date : 2025-03-28 21:23 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| jprd wrote:
| This is the kind of crap we learned about when studying the
| "Robber Baron" era in the US public school system. Well, I mean,
| we were _supposed_ to learn it - evidently a lot of folks did
| not.
| minimaxir wrote:
| The Robber Baron era was more an instruction manual.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Inspiration for why to stay in school so that you too could
| become a robber baron. Like all history, learn the previous
| failings so that you can avoid them.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| I don't see any connection to what you're talking about to
| this. You have to explain.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Elon Musk is, essentially, bailing out himself using investor
| money from another company he runs by assigning a very
| highball evaluation to the company he's been destroying.
|
| I don't know how you can get closer to the robber baron ideal
| than being able to distort the market like that.
| jprd wrote:
| Thank you, that's a very fair point, and I apologize for my
| *-centric" viewpoint and such a short quip. That is not what
| we're aiming for in conversation on this site.
|
| I took a giant shortcut, without providing sources, that was
| meant to indicate that we are in a situation that closely
| resembles the "Gilded Age" or "Robber Baron" era in the
| United States.
|
| I was intending to point towards the actions of individuals
| in the analogous position of those "Robber Barons", in
| particular here, Elon Musk.
|
| This dude used the data from Twitter, fed it to xAI (xAI
| spent lots of CapEx from investment on GPUs). Mix mid-"AI"
| training on such a ridiculously valuable dataset for free ==
| cool models. Cool models + data stream of Doomscrolling ==
| Higher valuation.
|
| This just seems like a "nepo-baby" hit it big on some meme
| coin and bailed out Daddy.
| minimaxir wrote:
| The SEC would likely have a field day with this, if there was
| still a functional SEC.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Does the SEC have any say over privately held companies?
| fredmingus wrote:
| In short, yes.
|
| https://www.sec.gov/resources-small-businesses/capital-
| raisi...
| Majromax wrote:
| I'm not sure the SEC would obviously have jurisdiction, since
| neither Twitter nor xAI were public companies. The FTC might
| care about such a merger, however, and I suppose minority
| investors in xAI would have some ability to file a lawsuit if
| they think that X was acquired over its fair value.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Xai and Twitter are not in any way competitors. What would
| the FTC do?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The SEC DOGE was in today?
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-securities-exchange-comm...
| perihelions wrote:
| Ongoing thread here,
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43510093
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Meanwhile, Elon is taking over the SEC with his DOGE stooges as
| we speak
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| Interestingly enough, I see a headline, pretty much in the same
| minute Musk tweeted about the deal:
|
| U.S. JUDGE REJECTS ELON MUSK'S BID TO DISMISS LAWSUIT ALLEGING
| HE DEFRAUDED TWITTER SHAREHOLDERS BY WAITING TOO LONG TO REVEAL
| STAKE
|
| What's going on ?? Because he very obviously is guilty of this.
|
| Here is the article - I get a feeling that this is very much
| related:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/legal/elon-musk-must-face-fraud-laws...
| pengaru wrote:
| What ever happened with the TSLA shareholders suing over xAI
| knocking the AI wind out of Tesla's sails?
| darkwater wrote:
| Kudos for the exit, Elon! /s
| adharmad wrote:
| What is the play here? Using money invested in xAI and its
| inflated valuation to bail out the X investors?
| poniko wrote:
| Yes same setup as when Tesla bought Solar city .. one playbook
| he pours out of.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It bails out Elon and means his Tesla shares (borrowed against
| to purchase Twitter) won't be liquidated as Tesla's share price
| continues to decline, using xAI investor funds. He uses hype
| and sentiment (inflating valuations) in the capital markets to
| always stay slightly ahead of consequences.
| rayiner wrote:
| Tesla shares are higher now than they were when he closed on
| Twitter in October 2022.
| TMWNN wrote:
| Heck, TSLA today is higher than on 5 November 2024, less
| than five months ago!
| timeon wrote:
| It is almost the same price.
| tedunangst wrote:
| But lower than on 6 November 2024, less than five months
| ago.
| dmix wrote:
| It's up 49% YOY https://www.google.com/finance/quote/TSLA
| :NASDAQ?window=1Y
|
| This is a bit of a silly game, their stock is very meme-y
| so whenever you set the start of the time range the
| aggregate % can vary heavily.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| That and the data that is a part of X can be used by the xAI
| team. I expect it will be in the TOS if it isn't there already.
|
| "xAI and X's futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take
| the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and
| talent."
| sunaookami wrote:
| There is a setting (opt-out outside of EU, opt-in inside EU I
| think) that allows/forbids data sharing with X since Grok was
| released.
| jsheard wrote:
| Weren't they already doing that? I recall before I bailed
| from X/Twitter they already added an AI training consent
| toggle, which silently defaulted to "I consent" for all
| existing users of course.
| palmotea wrote:
| > I recall before I bailed from X/Twitter they already
| added an AI training consent toggle, which silently
| defaulted to "I consent" for all existing users of course.
|
| There's a solution for that: build a Twitter bot that posts
| strange things.
| jsheard wrote:
| Are the porn bots still around? Maybe they were the
| heroes we needed after all.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| I think any LLM that's not trained on X data comes out ahead.
| HappySweeney wrote:
| To me it appears to be a way to pay his lenders without
| liquidating or collateralizing more Tesla stock.
| blueelephanttea wrote:
| So he can use the funds he raised for xAI to pay out the
| lenders for the initial Twitter purchase? Otherwise the
| lenders are just getting xAI stock (all stock deal) which I
| assume is illiquid?
| gscott wrote:
| A stock ponzi scheme to keep him afloat? Soon he will start
| a new venture and use that venture to save the previous
| venture and so on. Maybe a robot clothing company because
| robots shouldn't be naked.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| The debt goes to the merged company and so can be serviced
| or retired using the funds of the whole company.
| ajaimk wrote:
| Yes. He did it with Solarcity already.
| dashundchen wrote:
| Solar roofs was one of many scams.
|
| And he scammed the taxpayers of New York State for a billion
| dollar factory to build solar roofs. Factory built, stock was
| pumped, no solar roofs though.
|
| The puffery about waste and fraud is pure projection coming
| from a scammer like Musk.
| whynotminot wrote:
| I forgot all about the solar roof thing.
|
| In concept seems like a really interesting idea. I guess it
| never ended up working out.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Who also talks like Sam Altman that the human race will
| need to all be on welfare (Universal Basic Income) because
| of AI.
|
| I don't understand it all ...cut people's jobs who make
| multitudes of billions less (cut 25k probationary employees
| like ripping off a band-aid), want people to work like the
| Chinese do (day and night) so we are the leader in AI (?)
| and after AI starts replacing jobs we all need to be on a
| welfare system. Isn't a welfare system the biggest waste to
| the Republican party (independent here)?
|
| Does he even know his end game with all this or he's just
| having fun be the most powerful person?
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Can someone please explain this with more words?
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| My take is that its super obvious X is a rapidly failing social
| media platform that is reportedly very dangerously leveraged
| with Tesla stock value... but xAI still has that Zombo.com
| magic where anything is possible and the unattainable is
| unknown.
| paxys wrote:
| Elon bought Twitter for $44B, with a combination of his own
| money, money raised from investors, and $12B worth of debt
| secured by his Tesla shares.
|
| Since that time Twitter's valuation continued to drop, and by
| late 2024 several investors (like Fidelity) had marked the
| company's overall value down to as little as $9B.
|
| Now with the recent stock market turmoil and Tesla's massive
| share price drop, his Twitter loan is in danger of getting
| margin called, and that would spell disaster for Tesla, Twitter
| and his own finances.
|
| Separately Elon also started xAI, which received $6B of funding
| at a $40B valuation, and is in talks to raise more.
|
| So now he is doing some financial engineering to "sell" Twitter
| (X) to xAI. This means (1) whoever owns shares in Twitter can
| mark up their books again and (2) he can raise more funding for
| the combined entity and use that to pay off the Twitter loan.
| dustingetz wrote:
| so twitter shares were converted to xai shares but where did
| the 12B debt go?
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I get a kick out of how the link in this story is "twitter.com"
| instead of "x.com".
|
| Personally, I think everyone should just continue to say
| "Twitter."
| mtmail wrote:
| I think Hackernews changes the link to twitter.com after
| submission to avoid duplicates.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I do and I always will. I refuse to play along with corporate
| rebrands, be it Twitter, Facebook, Comcast, Charter or anything
| else.
| dbreunig wrote:
| Don't forget Blackwater!
| sorokod wrote:
| Currently known as Constellis.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_(company)
| fallingknife wrote:
| But you already are just by saying those names
| parkaboy wrote:
| *you mean "The Facebook" ;)
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| And Facebook instead of Meta, although if I think of it, I'd
| rather not say any of those in any context.
| paxys wrote:
| Facebook is a product, Meta is a company. It was always weird
| to say Facebook in the context of Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus
| etc. Heck who even uses Facebook now?
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| Yeah, I call the company Facebook, I don't care enough to
| follow their terminology, and I don't keep track of their
| products.
| dvh wrote:
| The best way is IMHO to say "social media" that way you're not
| promoting either
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I really try to not use Google as a verb.
| lightlyused wrote:
| Personally, don't use it at all. Worst social media platform
| IMO.
| tomcam wrote:
| > Personally, I think everyone should just continue to say
| "Twitter."
|
| Because...?
| dustingetz wrote:
| if this didn't happen, how much more would TSLA have to drop for
| the $12B debt to get margin called given it is collateralized by
| TSLA? IIUC what has happened here is the debt has been repaid by
| selling xAI equity? Wasn't xAI constructed in the first place to
| poof some magic money from thin air to give to unhappy Twitter
| investors and keep them happy?
| kccqzy wrote:
| You can take a look at the price of TSLA during the acquisition
| of Twitter as a reference.
| LPisGood wrote:
| It has dropped pretty low (relatively) at some points since the
| purchase - probably a fair bit under $100 to trigger any margin
| call.
| palmotea wrote:
| So, what does this actually mean?
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| Guessing it means Linda Yaccarino doesn't get to pretend to be
| CEO anymore.
| minimaxir wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if she's out in a few months.
| r1chardnl wrote:
| what
| blueelephanttea wrote:
| Ah yes. Now we know why those articles about X's valuation
| resurgence have been coming out lately. He "rescued the value" by
| selling it to another company he owns.
|
| Look, maybe the Twitter dataset and control over the algorithm is
| worth $45 billion. But I've seen the state of ads on Twitter
| these days and it is clearly not worth anything close to that
| from advertising income.
| bhouston wrote:
| He has done this move before with Tesla buying Solar City. When
| you do a deal with yourself you can assign any value you want to
| assets, it isn't a competitive process. In the previous case
| Solar City was dying but its acquisition by Tesla was pitched as
| a great synergy.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/solarcity-tesla-energy-belea...
|
| There were a few lawsuits from Tesla shareholders about the
| acquisition regarding self dealing but they didn't succeed:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolarCity
| mayneack wrote:
| Surely a theoretically disgruntled xAI shareholder is going to
| have a harder time here since they're both private companies
| and given Elon's proximity to any potential regulators.
| gruez wrote:
| Company directors are generally given wide latitude in what
| they can do without breaching fiduciary duty, so such
| lawsuits were always going to be an uphill battle.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| An acquisition is a special case (for the company being
| acquired) and the scrutiny is somewhat higher.
|
| At least in Delaware. I have no idea what corporate law is
| like in Texas.
| rayiner wrote:
| Tesla bought Solar City for $2.6 billion, and now it looks like
| the Tesla Energy division had about that much in net income
| last year alone.
| FreeRadical wrote:
| Tesla Energy existed before Tesla acquired Solar City
| refulgentis wrote:
| Solar City was a debacle, it died immediately. Tesla's story
| in court was they were about to go bankrupt, and it was a
| financial necessity to redeploy all Solar City assets,
| including all employees, to Model 3 production.
|
| It breaks my heart because my rust belt hometown got a
| substantial investment from the state they had been chasing
| for a couple decades.
|
| $700M of the Buffalo Billion went to a Solar City facility,
| Elon even said they were going to build the solar roofs
| there!
|
| New York State didn't dare pick a fight with him as the
| factory set empty for years.
|
| Full story via Bethany McLean, 2019:
|
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/how-elon-musk-
| gamble...
| foobarqux wrote:
| Putting aside the fact that you can't justify fraud by post-
| hoc outcomes (Shkreli and SBF also claimed that they didn't
| commit fraud because they would or did win it back), I doubt
| any of the Tesla Energy division income (even assuming the
| accounting is okay) is a result of businesses that can be
| traced back to Solar City.
|
| I suspect most of the business is battery storage and the
| Powerwall was introduced by Tesla before the acquisition.
| enslavedrobot wrote:
| The vertically integrated Tesla strategy is to use
| batteries to arbitrage the value of stored energy. This is
| well described in the Tesla "Master Plan" documents. Solar
| is a huge part of this.
|
| According to the company filings the solar assets Tesla
| acquired are still generating revenue at the rates
| projected during the acquisition.
| foobarqux wrote:
| Well I trust Elon's statements (even the financial
| statements) as far as I can throw them but can you point
| out where it says that? I'm searching the 10-K and I
| don't see solar broken out.
|
| But even if it's true I assume they are including their
| utility-scale solar and battery packs, which has nothing
| to do with Solar City: the panels are generic, the
| customer lists are not residential, they don't use the
| fancy shingles. Solar City did not help them in any way
| with these getting or fulfilling these contracts.
| mdorazio wrote:
| And how much of that is solar instead of Powerwall and
| Megapack? They don't break it out in filings unless I missed
| it.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Exactly. So then why draw conclusions about how SolarCity
| was a bad deal for shareholders (see parent comments)?
|
| There's no substantiation of that either way.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| We know the batteries are a lot of revenue. The
| substantiation is not zero.
| rayiner wrote:
| [delayed]
| mtmail wrote:
| Can we speculate if X's CTO didn't like the reorg? 3 days ago
| "X's director of engineering, Haofei Wang, has left the company "
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43470613
| ein0p wrote:
| More likely Musk liked xAI's CTO more than X's CTO, and parted
| ways with one of them. Which is his prerogative, as the owner
| of both companies. I'm sure Haofei would love to be the CTO of
| one of the strongest AI models in existence. I would, if I were
| in his shoes.
| CursedSilicon wrote:
| "strongest AI models in existence"
|
| [citation needed]
| llm_nerd wrote:
| To be fair they said one of the strongest models.
|
| We're at the point now where any heavily monetized player
| can build one of the strongest models. I mean, _especially_
| with all of the incredibly open Chinese companies releasing
| cutting edge research now that most American firms have
| gone quiet or only releasing their tailings.
| rsoto2 wrote:
| no thanks
| legitster wrote:
| As a reminder, the people who held X's debt had written down the
| company's value to less than $10 billion. So selling your company
| to yourself for $45 billion dollars is hilarious chicanery.
|
| Musk used his extremely overvalued company to bail out his other
| way overvalued company that he ran into the ground. It's a
| thinly-veiled, self dealing ponzi scheme. (It also echos the
| final fate of Solar City).
| verytrivial wrote:
| I for one hope this all ends really, really badly for him and his
| backers.
| karparov wrote:
| "... seeking the truth ..."
|
| Hahaha, ha ha, ha...
|
| Maybe more accurate to say "spreading _my_ truth ".
| saaaaaam wrote:
| So he just sold himself a company he already owns for a valuation
| that he himself assigned to that company but that was less than
| what he paid for it, and he paid entirely using "money" that has
| a made up value and which he issues himself?
|
| Wild.
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| Welcome to very-late-stage capitalism.
|
| And if you can get the right people to believe in the
| arbitrarily large numbers you invented out of thin air you can
| get away with just about anything because the wealthy don't
| have any real consequences.
| mingus88 wrote:
| Yeah these fantasies where musk would somehow go bankrupt by
| tanking Tesla and overpaying for Twitter were also wild
|
| He's literally the richest person the earth has ever known.
| He's never going to suffer financially. He has countless levers
| of power he can pull.
|
| The same fantasy applies to any past or current president ever
| spending a day in jail. He literally commands the most powerful
| military apparatus the world has ever seen. Even a sliver of
| that capability and influence ensures nobody will ever dare to
| try and slap some cuffs on him
| LanceJones wrote:
| He only holds ~15% of Tesla. His real money is in SpaceX...
| 50% ownership there. I wish people would think just a little
| before parroting the "hit Musk where it hurts" drivel.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| My quick search is showing Tesla is worth some $800B. 15%
| of that is real money.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| That military apparatus is sworn to uphold the Constitution,
| not support the current president.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| This only matters if people care enough to act
| appropriately when that is broken.
| berdon wrote:
| From what I have been told (specific to the US military):
|
| - Enlisted swear oaths to the constitution and President
|
| - Officers swear an oath to the constitution
|
| I've only been told this, I don't claim to know.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the owner of the monopoly board game company
| is the richest person ever.
| dustingetz wrote:
| equities are a ponzi scheme it will crash eventually probably
| after losing a war or climate no longer supports agriculture
| danpalmer wrote:
| I don't want to downplay your point, I basically agree, but
| in real terms I believe there have been several people richer
| than him, and it is hard to judge the relative wealth of
| people long ago.
| bhouston wrote:
| Elon was uniquely rich is US history but his wealthy
| fluctuates wildly:
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rockefeller-rich-elon-
| musks-w...
| enslavedrobot wrote:
| The value of Twitter was set when the bonds used to finance the
| purchase were sold recently for 97cents on the dollar.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| Musk threw in xAI ownership to sell those bonds, which
| themselves have an _11%_ rate. Musk basically backstopped the
| bonds by giving a heads up of _this_.
|
| No, that was absolute _fantasy_ numbers, and in no universe
| did it verify any value of Twitter.
|
| Musk really, really knows how to play people. He deserves
| that credit.
|
| And I mean, bond discounts or not have nothing to do with the
| value of a company. The discount on a bond is based upon the
| likelihood they'll ever be paid off, and after it was clear
| that Musk would save the failure of X by using one of his
| other companies and AI hype to do so (as others have said,
| just like SolarCity), the bond lost its discount. X's value
| could be $1, but if the bonds are going to be repaid they'll
| sell at no discount.
| rco8786 wrote:
| And then will leverage against that valuation for loans,
| acquisitions, etc.
|
| Self dealing. Nobody cares anymore.
| miohtama wrote:
| Good luck trying to get a bank to underwrite that loan,
| smells a bit risky.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| "Nice bank you've got there. Would be a shame if ________"
| (Insert any number of orders that Musk can have his friends
| in the executive branch issue to make life miserable for
| the bank principals.)
|
| It's good to be the king. Even better to own him.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Trump pardoned Trevor Milton today, who scammed investors out
| of millions doing things like his now infamous "rolling a
| truck down a hill to make it looks functional" demo.
|
| Milton donated $1.8M to Trump, and Miltons lawyer's sister is
| Pam Bondi, the Attorney General.
|
| This is _nakedly_ corrupt and a strong signal that you can
| get away with all manner of financial fuckery if you are on
| Trumps "good list".
| miohtama wrote:
| Every democratic country deserves the government they get.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| At least we don't have to worry about trans kids swimming
| on the girls swim team.
|
| /s
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Its almost like modern life is riddled with lies, liars, and
| their collective bullshit.
|
| I don't think this is a change in the human condition; we're
| extremely greedy hairless apes. But guys like Elon really show
| how low we can go.
| knicholes wrote:
| I argue that he's literally showing us how high we can go
| with SpaceX.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| With SpaceX? Or Ketamine??
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| What an absolute scammer lol.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| An also runs acquired an also ran.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I'd feel great being someone that financed the takeover of
| X/Twitter, and being stuck with inflate shares in an also-ran AI
| play. Obviously there is no rule of law for Musk, and no recourse
| for them.
|
| He'll keep his ball of twine rolling past TSLA's next earnings
| date on April 22nd.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| What makes you think xAI will be an also ran?
|
| Grok 3 is right up there with SOTA models and the time in which
| they trained it was fairly impressive. Seems like they have as
| good of a shot as anyone at capturing the market.
| paxys wrote:
| The only thing worse than investors assigning random made up
| valuations to their portfolio companies is owners themselves
| assigning random made up valuations to their companies.
| justanotheratom wrote:
| xAI's mission is to "understand the universe". Not sure how that
| aligns with X.
| mdhb wrote:
| This is marketing speak for collective as much data on people
| as possible. It's a surveillance company masquerading as an
| "AI" one.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Know thyself?
| tedunangst wrote:
| But how can X be the everything company if it's merely a
| subdivision?
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| This is Solar City all over again, but at least this time it's
| not with public investors money.
|
| He can now use the money raised by xAI, to pay off the debt of X,
| which was bleeding money.
|
| So today in corporate America we have:
|
| - Trump pardoning one of the most obvious scammer of the past 10
| years - Trevor Milton
|
| - Trump pardoning some obvious crypto scammers
|
| - Musk using investors money from one of his companies, to bail
| out his another company, at the valuation he himself set
|
| Unprecedented times. The damage to the rule of law will be hard
| repair - it will take decades.
| qwertox wrote:
| I wonder if Tesla will buy xAI. Doesn't Tesla need the GPU power
| of xAI? Are they renting it, or do they have their own servers?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Doesn't Tesla have their own "Dojo" custom AI chips? There
| seems to be a bit of pointless duplication either way between
| Tesla and X/xAI's developments in this space.
| redox99 wrote:
| On the latest TSLA event, Elon said Dojo was 5% of their
| training compute (the rest being nvidia). Although he hoped
| future dojo versions would improve.
| kemotep wrote:
| With the grok integration into X already being a thing and both
| being owned by Elon and called X it never really seemed like they
| were actually two different companies at any point so this is an
| interesting reminder that they were not.
| lapcat wrote:
| There must be some connection between this and the new equity
| funding last week, I would think?
|
| March 19: "Elon Musk's social network X has raised close to $1
| billion in new equity from investors" "Musk himself participated
| in the equity raise" "The deal values X's equity at roughly $32
| billion." https://fortune.com/2025/03/19/elon-musk-x-twitter-
| equity-fu...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Who is he going to merge the US with after he fucks that up?
| nerdix wrote:
| Canada and Greenland
| fzzzy wrote:
| I'm surprised they aren't talking about trying to take over
| Mexico too.
| theprop wrote:
| This is interesting and may point to X / Twitter becoming more
| AI-driven in the future (many possibilities). Grok has become my
| go-to AI -- I personally find it better than (the free version at
| least) of ChatGPT, paid Gemini, and anything else -- though it
| does have a lot of problems.
| snotrockets wrote:
| I don't believe it has to be said: It's not about product, it's
| about manipulating the balance sheet.
| khazhoux wrote:
| This reminds me of the time I bought a beautiful vintage guitar
| collection, all in pristine condition, from myself a few years
| ago. It was an amazing deal and I still don't know how I lucked
| out like that.
| justin66 wrote:
| When all is said and done, did the banks that helped finance
| Musk's original acquisition of Twitter get their money back?
| saltysalt wrote:
| X users are now officially just training data for Grok.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| As opposed to Reddit? Or your Gmail? Or everything else on the
| internet?
| saltysalt wrote:
| I take your point, however an AI company owning a social
| media platform is new.
| fzzzy wrote:
| Not really, Facebook (Meta, whatever) has been an ai
| company for a long time.
| spiderice wrote:
| The comment you just wrote is training data for every major LLM
| out there.
| saltysalt wrote:
| I'm aware, thanks.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I presume they _officially_ were before. And just unofficially
| for every other model, as all our posts online are.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I have no real opinion on this.
|
| But I see many of you do... except you all also told me over and
| over that X was going to fall apart when he cleaned house, that
| it was going to shut down, that bluesky had mass-appeal because
| of reasons that haven't come to fruition I guess, that Tesla
| stock was going to free fall while the rest of the market rose,
| that he would be exposed as a broke fraud... or whatever other
| silliness you get caught up in.
|
| I guess I have no opinion on this because unlike all of you that
| seem to have first hand knowledge of the man, I haven't met him.
| I see nothing but a disclosure about a company sale and what is
| likely steps to getting X back on the stock exchange someday.
|
| You are all the experts though.
| qwerpy wrote:
| The classic HN/reddit combo of overconfidence and wishful
| thinking. HN comments use bigger words and are somewhat less
| emotional but the main ideas are the same.
| thanhhaimai wrote:
| This move makes it more likely that the internal number for TSLA
| is not good, and Elon is expecting the price to go down.
|
| He has access to the real revenue number. If it's going well, he
| wouldn't have to perform this maneuver. xAI was relatively
| separated from X and TSLA, and wasn't having the backlashes
| associated with the two. Now he risks having the xAI branding
| tarnished too. He wouldn't do this unless the TSLA internal
| numbers are bad and he has to protect himself first, at the cost
| of xAI brand.
| ripped_britches wrote:
| This doesn't seem like a branding related deal, it seems like
| wanting to further marry their operations for strategic
| reasons.
| redox99 wrote:
| I don't understand the relation with TSLA.
| kansface wrote:
| Musk leveraged TSLA stock to buy Twitter.
| mandeepj wrote:
| There's a margin on TSLA stock at $112 or $115; Like some
| other commentator said as well - he collateralled TSLA stock
| to take a loan to buy Twitter.
| epgui wrote:
| None of this is really related to TSLA.
| pityJuke wrote:
| xAI was seperated from X in what sense? xAI employees were X
| employees [1]. X reportedly had a stake in xAI, although The
| Verge says that hasn't materialized yet [0]. xAI's primary UI
| was X.
|
| (This is primarily around your backlash comments, I'm sure some
| shareholder malarkey could make them technically separate).
|
| [0]: https://www.theverge.com/news/638933/elon-musk-x-xai-
| acquisi...
|
| [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/10/24339249/elon-musk-
| xai-x-...
| w10-1 wrote:
| "This will allow us to build a platform that doesn't just reflect
| the world but actively accelerates human progress"
|
| You get to pick winners AND be protected by section 230 of the
| Communications Decency Act from liability for anything said on
| the platform.
|
| Stockholder privacy is protected by law; they could be Russian,
| Saudi, Chinese, North Korean crypto-currency hackers; CIA;
| friends of friends, mom and pop, whomever.
|
| X algorithms and work practices are protected by trade secrets,
| confidentiality agreements, and binding arbitration.
|
| Even superpower-nation security services are deeply dependent on
| the willing participation of the telecommunications industry.
| They would be blind to a unwilling provider, particularly one
| with their own worldwide network.
|
| Don't blame Elon Musk. We built this system. "If you build it,
| they will come."
| ripped_britches wrote:
| It should be noted that the other xAI shareholders are/were
| supportive of the X takeover and all. So although I personally
| don't like Elon, this doesn't seem like self dealing as many here
| claim. Solar City worked out well even though it too seemed like
| self dealing.
|
| There are actually bad things to hate him for but acquisitions
| fraud is probably not on the table.
| snotrockets wrote:
| Can't wait for the Monday issue of Matt Levine's newsletter.
| danso wrote:
| Okay, I know Tesla's extremely high P/E ratio is because it's
| worth is not just tied to cars, and so xAI priced at $20B more
| than Anthropic does not necessarily mean xAI's AI products are
| that much better than Anthropic's (e.g. presumably xAI's worth is
| tied to synergies with Tesla FSD, Optimus, and maybe even
| Neurolink)...but what products does xAI actually offer, other
| than Grok being an add-on for premium X subscriptions?
|
| Not only does the Grok API not have access to Grok 3, which was
| released more than a month ago, it doesn't even have it's own
| SDK? [0]
|
| > _Some of Grok users might have migrated from other LLM
| providers. xAI API is designed to be compatible with both OpenAI
| and Anthropic SDKs, except certain capabilities not offered by
| respective SDK. If you can use either SDKs, we recommend using
| OpenAI SDK for better stability._
|
| (every code example has a call for `from openai import OpenAI`)
|
| How would using Grok be viable for any enterprise? And if Grok's
| API is designed to be drop-in replacement for OpenAI's, how are
| they not able to just use Grok to whip up their own SDK variant
| based on OpenAI's open-sourced SDK [1] and API spec?
|
| [0] https://docs.x.ai/docs/guides/migration
|
| [1] https://github.com/openai/openai-python
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| How is that legal? Could he also decide to sell a Bic pen he
| personally owns to XAI for 100 billion dollars? What's the line?
| Do you need to be able to convince a judge you truly believe it's
| worth that?
| Garlef wrote:
| It's this maybe merely a financial move that makes sense in the
| world of ultra-rich people and banks?
|
| I read somewhere that he used his tesla assets as a security to
| get a loan to buy X and this provides some buffer or sticks it to
| someone else in case tesla goes down?
| bluesounddirect wrote:
| wow i forgot about how dumb x was . now we xai ... so what .
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