Elon Musk says xAI has acquired X in deal that values social media site at $33 billion

Elon Musk said on Friday that his startup xAI has merged with X, his social network, in an all-stock transaction that values the artificial intelligence company at $80 billion and the social media company at $33 billion.

“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined,” Musk, the world’s richest person, wrote in a post on X. “Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent.”

He added that the merger would, “unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO acquired Twitter in a deal valued around $44 billion in late 2022 implementing massive cost cuts and soon renaming it X.

Musk launched xAI less than two years ago with a stated goal to “understand the true nature of the universe.” The startup has been trying to compete directly with OpenAI, the richly valued AI startup that Musk co-founded in 2015 as a non-profit research lab. He later left OpenAI and has recently been involved in a public relations and legal spat with the company and CEO Sam Altman over the direction that it’s taken.

At xAI, Musk’s team has been developing large language models and AI software products, taking on offerings from OpenAI as well as Google, Microsoft, Meta and others. X and xAI have already been intertwined, with xAI’s Grok chatbot available to users of the social media app.

WATCH: X acquires xAI