Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has acquired his social media platform X — formerly known as Twitter — in an all-stock deal valued at $33 billion. The move marks a new phase in Musk’s fast-paced consolidation of his tech empire, combining two of his high-profile companies to advance AI efforts, including the training of Grok, xAI’s chatbot rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Announcing the deal on X, Musk wrote: “The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45B less $12B debt).” He added, “xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent.” While the transaction aligns Musk's AI and social media operations, several details remain unclear — including investor compensation, the fate of X’s leadership, and potential regulatory hurdles.
Analysts were taken aback by the move. “This development feels surprising and somewhat unexpected,” said PP Foresight analyst Paolo Pescatore. “To a certain extent, it closes a chapter in the turbulent saga of X.” According to Gil Luria of D.A. Davidson & Co., “The choice of $45 billion is not a coincidence. It is $1 billion higher than the take-private transaction for Twitter in 2022.”
Musk, who previously acquired Twitter for $44 billion in 2022 and declared “the bird is freed,” has dramatically reshaped the platform, slashing its workforce and seeing advertisers flee — though many have since returned. The debt taken on during the 2022 buyout was finally offloaded last month by the seven banks that held it, capitalizing on growing investor interest in AI and X’s improved financials.
An investor in xAI, speaking anonymously to Reuters, said the deal didn’t come as a surprise and viewed it as part of Musk’s continued tightening of control over his ventures. Musk reportedly did not seek investor approval but highlighted that xAI and X had been working closely and would deepen integration around Grok.
The acquisition also comes amid Musk’s legal battles with OpenAI, a company he co-founded but now competes with. After his failed $97.4 billion bid to acquire OpenAI, Musk launched Grok-3 in February and continues to expand xAI’s capabilities, including through its Memphis-based “Colossus” supercomputing cluster — said to be the largest in the world.
Meanwhile, a U.S. judge recently rejected Musk’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit accusing him of delaying disclosure of his Twitter stake, adding a new wrinkle to his already complex legal and business portfolio.
Social media platform X, which was formerly known as Twitter, is sold yet again. This time Elon Musk announced that his AI giant Grok has acquired X in an all-stock transaction. This leads to a combined valuation of $80 billion for Grok AI and $33 billion for X. Through his X handler, Musk said, "xAI has acquired X in an all-stock transaction. The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45B less $12B debt)."
The world's richest man, Musk, highlighted that xAI and X's futures are intertwined. He said, "Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, computing, distribution and talent. This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI's advanced AI capability and expertise with X's massive reach."
"The combined company will deliver smarter, more meaningful experiences to billions of people while staying true to our core mission of seeking truth and advancing knowledge. This will allow us to build a platform that doesn't just reflect the world but actively accelerates human progress," Musk stated, recognizing the dedication of everyone at xAI and X that has brought them to this point.
What is Grok and how does it work? Launched by xAI in 2023, Grok is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot. The chatbot is advertised as having a "sense of humour" and direct access to sister platform X, as per Wikipedia. According to X's help desk, Grok is an AI assistant who helps complete tasks, like answering questions, solving problems, and brainstorming. Grok is available to X users and is powered by xAI's state-of-the-art large language model (LLM).
Inspired by the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and JARVIS from Iron Man, Grok is designed to answer almost any question with a touch of wit and humour, while also providing helpful and insightful responses. Grok utilizes next-token prediction model weights to know how to perform certain tasks. That being said, Grok is available on the X platform as an AI assistant.
In the early hours of March 29, Musk said that since its founding two years ago, xAI has rapidly become one of the leading AI labs in the world, building models and data centers at unprecedented speed and scale. In the case of X, Musk added that the social media platform is the digital town square where more than 600 million active users go to find the real-time source of ground truth and, in the last two years, has been transformed into one of the most efficient companies in the world, positioning it to deliver scalable future growth.
On March 29, 2025, it was reported that Elon Musk's AI company xAI bought social media platform X (formerly Twitter) for $33 billion in an all-stock deal. Musk bought Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion, later renaming it to X. The deal values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion. Musk fired 75% of Twitter's employees after buying it in 2022.
X is facing a lawsuit from December 2024 regarding breach of contract, severance pay exclusions, and wage theft. Specific information on this is yet to be revealed if and when the financials of both companies are made public. The latest sale of X also brings into question the future of severance pay litigations against the social media platform.
Back in December 2024, U.S. Magistrate Judge Christopher Burke stated that X needs to face six out of the ten claims from the 2023 million lawsuit where the social media platform was accused of breach of contract, severance pay exclusions, and wage theft, along with not providing enough advance notices of layoffs. The other four claims alleging that X engaged in fraud and breached the merger agreement were to be dismissed.
So far, Elon Musk has managed to beat most lawsuits against him, and with this latest AI acquisition of X and his increased role in the U.S. administration led by President Donald Trump, it remains to be seen what would be the fate of the once-revered microblogging platform, formerly known as Twitter.
