- cross-posted to:
- technology
- cross-posted to:
- technology
Summary
Elon Musk announced that his AI startup xAI has merged with his social media platform X in an all-stock deal, valuing xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion.
Musk stated the merger will combine AI expertise with X’s broad reach.
xAI, launched less than two years ago, competes with OpenAI and has developed the Grok chatbot, integrated with X.
Yes, but about $14 billion was financed by debt rather than shares of stock, so the market cap immediately dropped to $30B as a result (enterprise value is market cap + outstanding debt because in a liquidation the debt would be paid out of the assets before the shareholders get anything). So in a sense, the current shares were worth about $30B at the time of the 2022 transaction.
If this new merger is a private transaction that values X at $33B and xAI at $80B, and everyone agrees, it’s functionally the same as if it were worth $3.3B and $8B.