Elon Musk Says He Has Sold X to His A.I. Start-Up xAI

Elon Musk said on Friday that he sold X, his social media company, in Xai, his artificial intelligence start-up, in an unusual arrangement that shows the financial maneuver within the richest man’s commercial empire in the world.

The All-Stock agreement assessed XAI at $ 80 billion and X at 33 billion dollars, said that Mr. Musk said that the X-X price was down compared to the $ 44 billion that Mr. Musk paid for the social media company in 2022, but more than the valuation of $ 12 billion than certain investors of X have recently allocated it. XAI’s latest assessment, during a fundraising of funds in December, was around $ 40 billion.

The two companies are in private and already share significant resources, such as engineers. A chatbot called Grok, produced by XAI, is formed on data published by X users and is available on X. Last month, bankers for X told investors that some of the income from the social media from XAI.

Mr. Musk wrote in his article that “the assets of Xai and X are intertwined”.

“Today,” he said, “we officially take the measure to combine data, models, calculation, distribution and talent.” He added: “The combined society will offer more intelligent and more significant experiences to billions of people while remaining faithful to our central mission to seek the truth and to advance knowledge.”

The agreement shows how Mr. Musk can play with different parts of his commercial empire. In this case, he folded a business that has lost value, X, in a company that gained value, XAI. Mr. Musk made a similar maneuver in 2016 when he used the actions of his electric car company, Tesla, to buy Solarcity, a clean energy company where he was the largest shareholder and his cousin Lyndon Rive was managing director.

While Tesla is a listed company which must disclose its finances and other information to shareholders, most of Mr. Musk’s companies are private and more opaque. These include the manufacturer of SpaceX rockets; The Boring Company, a tunneling start-up; And Neuralink, a brain interface company. Mr. Musk often moves resources and employees among his companies, defying traditional commercial standards and operating its various companies as a large MUSC company.