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xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B
- endofreach 2y ago> Since its founding two years ago, xAI has rapidly become one of the leading AI labs in the world Am i behind the moon because i haven't heard of xAI?
- zombiwoof 2y ago[flagged]
- whatever1 2y agoIs our boy getting margin called from his Tesla stakes ?
- Sparyjerry 2y agoNo, TSLA is still higher than it was when he bought Twitter.
- UltraSane 2y agoThis feels like letting rich people print their own currency.
- jprd 2y agoThis 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 2y agoThe Robber Baron era was more an instruction manual.
- dylan604 2y agoInspiration 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 2y agoI don't see any connection to what you're talking about to this. You have to explain.
- fzeroracer 2y agoElon 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.
- silisili 2y agoIn fairness, a recent report put X's value at 44b, though I don't have access to FT to read the source material to know why. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/elon-musk-s-x-value-rebounds-to-44b-in-latest-funding-and-musk-boosts-stake-1034492412 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/elon-musk-s-...
- jprd 2y agoThank 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.
- Hyperboreanal 2y agoYou're just using buzzwords. How is this analogous to robber barons at all?
- buzzert 2y agoWho is stealing from whom in this scenario?
- minimaxir 2y agoThe SEC would likely have a field day with this, if there was still a functional SEC.
- dghlsakjg 2y agoDoes the SEC have any say over privately held companies?
- fredmingus 2y agoIn short, yes. https://www.sec.gov/resources-small-businesses/capital-raising-building-blocks/private-companies-sec https://www.sec.gov/resources-small-businesses/capital-raisi...
- Majromax 2y agoI'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 2y agoXai and Twitter are not in any way competitors. What would the FTC do?
- willy_k 2y ago[flagged]
- propter_hoc 2y agoThis is a very mistaken impression, the SEC certainly is the regulator with jurisdiction over private share trades. The onus for reporting is just much higher for public companies. As a high-profile example, the SEC sued Theranos, a private company with only accredited investors, for making misrepresentations to their investors. https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2018-41 https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2018-41
- pengaru 2y agoWhat ever happened with the TSLA shareholders suing over xAI knocking the AI wind out of Tesla's sails?
- darkwater 2y agoKudos for the exit, Elon! /s
- adharmad 2y agoWhat is the play here? Using money invested in xAI and its inflated valuation to bail out the X investors?
- ajaimk 2y agoYes. He did it with Solarcity already.
- dashundchen 2y agoSolar 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 2y agoI forgot all about the solar roof thing. In concept seems like a really interesting idea. I guess it never ended up working out.
- paul7986 2y agoWho 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?
- poniko 2y agoYes same setup as when Tesla bought Solar city .. one playbook he pours out of.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
- andrewstuart 2y agoCan someone please explain this with more words?
- bayarearefugee 2y agoMy 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.
- dgfitz 2y agoI was watching the US NCAAM basketball tournament last night, and all the announcers had their Twitter handles displayed under their names. I had a thought that Twitter will eventually become a group of: famous people, media, and bots all just tweeting at each other. Or people do still use the platform. I never have, so I can’t say one way or the other.
- phatfish 2y agoFor celebrities it is a bullet point on their CV. - Control of high engagement Twitter account with 50 bazillion followers. Like commits on Github for tech bros. All those spelling mistakes won't fix themselves.
- telotortium 2y agoClearly the $44B price was too high for what it was really worth as a platform - Musk tried to get out of the deal, or at least decrease the price, but was forced to buy it at his initial offer by the courts. But I don't think there's any basis to say it's rapidly failing, at least from an engagement perspective - if BlueSky or Threads were going to kill X, they would have done so by now, or at least be well on their way. Besides, the real value of X is to seize control of a powerful propaganda platform from progressives, and in that he succeeded, maybe even beyond his wildest dreams.
- 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gwbas1c 2y agoI 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 2y agoI think Hackernews changes the link to twitter.com after submission to avoid duplicates.
- bigstrat2003 2y agoI do and I always will. I refuse to play along with corporate rebrands, be it Twitter, Facebook, Comcast, Charter or anything else.
- dbreunig 2y agoDon't forget Blackwater!
- fallingknife 2y agoBut you already are just by saying those names
- parkaboy 2y ago*you mean "The Facebook" ;)
- IMTDb 2y ago
- dustingetz 2y agoif 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 2y agoYou can take a look at the price of TSLA during the acquisition of Twitter as a reference.
- LPisGood 2y agoIt has dropped pretty low (relatively) at some points since the purchase - probably a fair bit under $100 to trigger any margin call.
- IAmGraydon 2y agoThe loan is not collateralized with TSLA stock. He used Twitter’s assets to collateralize it.
- palmotea 2y agoSo, what does this actually mean?
- lastofthemojito 2y agoGuessing it means Linda Yaccarino doesn't get to pretend to be CEO anymore.
- minimaxir 2y agoI wouldn't be surprised if she's out in a few months.
- r1chardnl 2y agowhat
- blueelephanttea 2y agoAh 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.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bhouston 2y agoHe 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-beleaguered-history-elon-musk-2021-7 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolarCity
- mayneack 2y agoSurely 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 2y agoCompany 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 2y agoAn 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.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mtmail 2y agoCan 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43470613
- ein0p 2y agoMore 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 2y ago"strongest AI models in existence" [citation needed]
- llm_nerd 2y agoTo 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.
- ein0p 2y agoSee the leaderboard tab here: https://lmarena.ai https://lmarena.ai. Or just try it. It's excellent. Usage is free of charge so far. Subjectively, on my prompts, it seems substantially stronger than GPT 4o and 4.5. I also like its more "informal" tone, and its willingness to discuss the more controversial topics.
- rsoto2 2y agono thanks
- legitster 2y agoAs 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).
- tim333 2y agoAnother interesting bit of finance is X's last earnings were quite good but if you looked at what the sales consisted of I think about $500m was XAi paying to advertise/have Grok on X which seemed a bit iffy.
- justanotheratom 2y agoxAI's mission is to "understand the universe". Not sure how that aligns with X.
- mdhb 2y agoThis is marketing speak for collective as much data on people as possible. It’s a surveillance company masquerading as an “AI” one.
- justanotheratom 2y agowhat makes you think it is a surveillance company?
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoKnow thyself?
- verytrivial 2y agoI for one hope this all ends really, really badly for him and his backers.
- fixprix 2y agoI hope like the previous 20 years, his companies just get more and more successful. I like electric cars, and rockets, and AI, and tunnels, and brain implants, and less government spending, and real people with flaws.
- verytrivial 2y agoAt least the trains will run on time.
- karparov 2y ago"... seeking the truth ..." Hahaha, ha ha, ha... Maybe more accurate to say "spreading my truth".
- maxlin 2y agoSummer child you don't really know how CN's work now do you
- saaaaaam 2y agoSo 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 2y agoWelcome 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.
- lanfeust6 2y ago> very-late-stage The cope is alive and well. "aaaany time now it will all fall apart"
- Hyperboreanal 2y agoCapitalism will fall in 2 more weeks comrade, trust the plan
- mingus88 2y agoYeah 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 2y agoHe 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.
- spiderfarmer 2y agoAn also runs acquired an also ran.
- throwaway5752 2y agoI'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 2y agoWhat 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.
- throwaway5752 2y agoBecause it is run by Elon Musk, and he hasn't shown any sign that he's no longer good any running things. His successful endeavors are the ones he neglects.
- ilikehurdles 2y agoWhy would someone be upset over getting xAI on top of having twitter equity?
- tim333 2y agoI guess the investors were basically making a bet on Musk making things work and so still are.
- paxys 2y agoThe 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.
- baobabKoodaa 2y agonot sure what is the distinction you're trying to make between owners and investors
- tedunangst 2y agoBut how can X be the everything company if it's merely a subdivision?
- TheAlchemist 2y agoThis 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.
- tim333 2y ago>Trump pardoning some obvious crypto scammers who?
- TheAlchemist 2y agohttps://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/28/trump-pardon-bitmex-crypto-exchange-money-laundering.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/28/trump-pardon-bitmex-crypto-e...
- rqtwteye 2y agoIs Bankman-Fried next?
- TheAlchemist 2y agoI would be shocked if he's not out within 3 months. If he's not, that would mean that he was an altruist after all...
- tim333 2y agoI wouldn't call the bitmex guys scammers. They were found guilty of not implementing proper anti money laundering regulations but didn't really steal money I think. They also invented perpetual futures which have been a very successful financial instrument. They were only sentenced to six months house arrest for Hayes and probation only for Delo, all served a while ago. SBF on the other hand did bad stuff and has only served one year out of a 25 year sentence and I'd be a little surprised if he's out in a hurry.
- qwertox 2y agoI 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 2y agoDoesn'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 2y agoOn 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.
- TheAlchemist 2y agoTesla Dojo ? We're getting close to FSD on that - it was announced in 2019. Here is a chart from Tesla AI, 2 years ago: https://x.com/Tesla_AI/status/1671589874686730270 https://x.com/Tesla_AI/status/1671589874686730270 Judge by yourself where it's now. Folks, it's all smokes and mirrors !
- kemotep 2y agoWith 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.
- TZubiri 2y agoThe grok thing feels as forced and useless as every other AI feature by every other company. This has "sure buddy" vibes all over it.
- redox99 2y agoI actually find the "Explain this post" feature pretty nice.
- erichocean 2y agoSame, I pay for all of the usual AI providers and still find myself using Grok multiple times per day. For one thing, it works really, really well.
- andreygrehov 2y agoYou might want to give Grok a try. It performs better than any other LLMs out there.
- lapcat 2y agoThere 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-funding-valuation/ https://fortune.com/2025/03/19/elon-musk-x-twitter-equity-fu...
- Nemo_bis 2y agoYes. Probably that was wash trading to provide a fake valuation to justify the merger price.
- gwern 2y agoIf nothing else, you want to do this merger after the check clears from some new investors, for two reasons: it provides a high valuation you can use to minimize the wasted equity, and because it is highly dilutive of X.ai shareholders to transfer a lot of their equity to a Twitter which is not remotely worth $44b, you want all shareholders in before you soak them in the merger, rather than after, when they can bail or demand revised terms which reflect the actual low value of Twitter now dragging down X.ai.
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoWho is he going to merge the US with after he fucks that up?
- nerdix 2y agoCanada and Greenland
- fzzzy 2y agoI'm surprised they aren't talking about trying to take over Mexico too.
- joshdavham 2y agoThe reason behind wanting to annex us Canadians and not Mexico is because we speak English and they don’t. C’est logique.
- prawn 2y agoI'd say someone has convinced him that Canada and Greenland will increase in value as the planet continues to warm, and this makes them 'at any cost' targets.
- kelnos 2y agoWhy would they want to do that? Their base doesn't like Mexico or Mexicans. Keeping "Mexicans" (scare quotes because of course it's not just Mexicans who enter the US through the southern border) out of the US was a big part of Trump's platform.
- ergocoder 2y agoThen, they would vote democrats. This might actually help democrats win presidency.
- hatsix 2y agoJust like Puerto Rico and DC?
- theprop 2y agoThis 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 2y agoI don't believe it has to be said: It's not about product, it's about manipulating the balance sheet.
- andreygrehov 2y agoCustomers care about the product, not the balance sheet. Musk could pull it off? Good for him.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- justin66 2y agoWhen all is said and done, did the banks that helped finance Musk's original acquisition of Twitter get their money back?
- stingrae 2y agothey get stock in xAI
- caseyy 2y agoNow xAI should just issue more stock that X would buy with xAI’s funds. Dilute until financiers have nothing — a move known as the tech bro classic.
- justin66 2y agoPlease cite your sources. (edit: Bloomberg says the banks unloaded their shares earlier this year, reportedly "without taking a loss")
- Tycho 2y agoRecently they were selling on the debt because its value had recovered close to par. But I don’t think this deal involved paying down any of that debt ahead of schedule.
- justin66 2y agoThey must be selling some ads. Good for them, I guess.
- saltysalt 2y agoX users are now officially just training data for Grok.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoAs opposed to Reddit? Or your Gmail? Or everything else on the internet?
- saltysalt 2y agoI take your point, however an AI company owning a social media platform is new.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y ago[flagged]
- qwerpy 2y agoThe 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.
- _DeadFred_ 2y agoDoesn't this violate the spirit of HN? Zero value add on the topic, targeted specifically at other HN users not the article, etc?
- thanhhaimai 2y agoThis 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.
- deeth_starr_v 2y agoThis is my feeling too. Good chance of a margin call coming for all his loans backed with TESLA shares
- ripped_britches 2y agoThis doesn’t seem like a branding related deal, it seems like wanting to further marry their operations for strategic reasons.
- redox99 2y agoI don't understand the relation with TSLA.
- kansface 2y agoMusk leveraged TSLA stock to buy Twitter.
- 2y ago
- gorfian_robot 2y agoThe Economist is pessimistic https://archive.ph/XkmDi https://archive.ph/XkmDi
- w10-1 2y ago"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." (Edit: I acknowledge the downvote and normally delete if/since judged not helpful. But I would appreciate it if the flaws were pointed out explicitly: a category mistake in ascribing personal responsibility for collective effects? assuming the worst, or fear-mongering? just hyperventilating? I honestly don't want to waste anyone's time. I thought pointing out that legal protections necessary for companies could be so abused would stimulate the policy-minded.)
- trhway 2y ago>You get to pick winners AND be protected by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act from liability That should be, and i thought was, prohibited. Either you're a common carrier (and protected as such) or you're editorializing. Unfortunately the enforcement seems to be lacking more and more, and that even without considering that Musk is probably not subject to any enforcement these days.
- chvid 2y agoAll the major social medias have algorithmic feeds and are protected by this law. I think that is fair to point out.
- ripped_britches 2y agoIt 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.
- deeth_starr_v 2y agoSolar City did not work out well. What are you talking about? That acquisition was a fraud
- whats_a_quasar 2y agoWhat's the source / evidence for that? If the xAI shareholders really are all fine with it there's no ethical issue. But they have to be basically unanimously ok with the deal. Even a small investor has the right to not have their capital used for an insanely conflicted deal.
- gwern 2y ago> It should be noted that the other xAI shareholders are/were supportive of the X takeover and all. No xAI shareholder has any incentive to be honest about that. If they criticize it, Musk will cut them out of all future investments. And if they are an xAI shareholder, criticism may well be grounds for seizing their equity. Particularly if they are an xAI employee: Musk companies usually have a equity contract & NDA which says that your options can be canceled at any time for $0, they can be bought back even if vested, you are not allowed to sell without their permission while they are private (ie. forever), and you are gagged about all this: https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/15/spacex-employee-stock-sales-forbidden/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/15/spacex-employee-stock-sale... (Similar to Altman's OpenAI NDAs and equity agreements that OAers were unpleasantly surprised to discover back around the coup.)
- arandomusername 2y agoI wouldn't be surprised if most X investors were already investors in xAI anyway. Probably a big reason they got into X is for future investments and spacex.
- snotrockets 2y agoCan't wait for the Monday issue of Matt Levine's newsletter.
- danso 2y agoOkay, 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 https://docs.x.ai/docs/guides/migration [1] https://github.com/openai/openai-python https://github.com/openai/openai-python
- dimitri-vs 2y agoNot a fan of Grok by any means but an SDK isn't that much of a requirement. We use liteLLM as it gets really annoying to roll your own router when you have so many viable providers with various specialties.
- thorum 2y agoThe OpenAI library is used pretty much everywhere in the LLM world, every serious AI provider has an OpenAI-compatible API, or you can use something like OpenRouter which is also OpenAI-compatible. Standardization is good.
- electriclove 2y agoGrok is also a stand-alone product with an optional $30/month subscription. Perhaps they are seeing a huge increase in usage here and are hoping that subscriptions follow.
- pests 2y ago
- maximus-decimus 2y agoHow 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?
- miohtama 2y agoHe does not need to convince judge, but other shareholders who agreed here.
- Garlef 2y agoIt'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 2y agowow i forgot about how dumb x was . now we xai ... so what .
- IAmGraydon 2y agoDoes this dork think the entire world is that dumb?
- ActorNightly 2y agoHave you seen his latest interview with Fox? He looks like he hasn't slept in a week.
- reneberlin 2y agoThe bots on X are built into it now? So influence crowds by diametral extreme positions in an automated manner is a nobrainer now.
- _ea1k 2y agoThere's a lot of negativity here, but tbh, it makes complete sense. Grok and X are really tightly integrated already, and it was strange that they were separate enterprises to begin with. That part was odd. Fixing it isn't odd.
- ceejayoz 2y agoWhat can Grok do that’s worth $80B?
- _ea1k 2y agoNearly the same thing as Google search can at this point, but maybe a better job of it. It isn't people's default choice at this point, but I'm having a hard time imagining people not trending toward it (or a competitor) over time. And right now, Gemini's public models aren't cutting it. $80B for Twitter+Grok is potentially a bargain, but it all depends on execution.
- quest88 2y agoWhat was previously broken? What can they both now do that they could not do before?
- whats_a_quasar 2y agoThe negativity is because he's using investor money in xAI in a related party transaction. He's negotiating both sides of the sale and it's not at all obvious the transaction price is a good or real price for Twitter. It may make sense to merge the two, but this is an unethical way to make a deal and I think it is likely the xAI investors are getting screwed.
- drexlspivey 2y agoWill someone think of Larry Ellison
- _ea1k 2y agoI can understand that angle, but TBH, I have a hard time caring. They aren't a public company, and their private shareholders aren't lacking for resources to fight if they disagreed with this choice.
- vzaliva 2y agoAre some taxes due for this "sale"?
- tim333 2y agoProbably not. He bought twitter for $44bn and this is valuing it at $45bn. There probably isn't a profit after costs and what not.
- dzhiurgis 2y agoMust be the most expensive botnet in human history
- basisword 2y agoSo he bought Twitter for $44bn 2.5 years ago and has run it so badly that even when his own company bails it out using made up figures the best he can do is $33bn. Embarrassing. It's not much more than a pyramid scheme.
- tim333 2y agoThe 44bn was paid approx with 32bn equity, 12bn debt, so it's about break even.
- tim333 2y agoI'm guessing the logic is that an AI company is sexier and given higher equity valuations than a struggling social network.
- kittikitti 2y agoStocks were down in a big way today and this signals that they're expecting a bloody Monday.
- NelsonMinar 2y agoDoes anyone know who xAI's board of directors is now? I can't find reliable information online but it appears to be very small, maybe just two people (one of whom is Musk.)
- czk 2y agoAll I can find is that it consists of two people, Elon Musk and Jared Birchall (wealth manager of Musk since 2016, CEO of Neuralink, "right hand man", etc)` If there are others, it's likely to be representatives from firms like Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz? Also worth noting that in July 2024 he was discussing having Tesla invest 5B in xAI, I forgot about this one: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1815907844434112999 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1815907844434112999
- NelsonMinar 2y agoIt seems odd that xAI was able to raise $6B without offering a board seat to someone other than "Elon and Elon's personal money manager". But a lot of things about Musk's businesses are odd.
- spooneybarger 2y agoAnd people said Twitter was a bad investment
- wnevets 2y agoI'm curious to know if people on HN still think twitter is doing better than ever
- legendofbrando 2y agoIn similar news: my left hand acquired my right hand today in an all stock deal valuing the combined hands at $1T. Praising the announcement my arms noted on the deal: “With these two hands now together, there’s nothing our combined fist of might can’t do.” Competitors, my left and right feet, declined to comment on the merger but are said to be in their own separate talks about a deal.
- permo-w 2y agoright but you don't have $1T to do that, whereas clearly he has however much money he's paid for it. it's a weird thing to do, but if he has the money to do it then meh?
- ddtaylor 2y agoIn similar news: my left hand acquired my right hand today in an all stock deal valuing the combined hands at $250,000. Praising the announcement my arms noted on the deal: “With these two hands now together, there’s nothing our combined fist of might can’t do.” Competitors, my left and right feet, declined to comment on the merger but are said to be in their own separate talks about a deal.
- permo-w 2y agochanges nothing
- achierius 2y agoYeah it does, presumably he has that much money, which invalidates your original point. Hope that helps explain the situation!
- permo-w 2y agoit doesn't invalidate anything; my original point was that Musk has this much money, meaning that he's just moving money around, meaning that this pretentious analogy is not actually making any kind of insightful point whatsoever. what Musk is doing is taking two entities already with a high market value and then merging them, he's not just deciding randomly that 2 irrelevant things have value. how much money this guy has is irrelevant. it's just a shitty attempt at satire, which I cannot stand
- arghandugh 2y agoA story about the most destructive man in the history of high technology (who is currently demolishing the future for most everyone on here) bilking his co-investors out of billions of dollars was allowed to stay up on Hacker News for two hours? Huh!
- brickfaced 2y ago>A story about the most destructive man in the history of high technology This seems a bit, uh, hyperbolic
- 9283409232 2y agoYou're right. He's high on ketamine not technology.
- maxlin 2y agoHappy to see xAI succeed and its fate being intertwined with X. Some paths to ultimate success for the greater good don't take the straightest ways
- ActorNightly 2y agoIgnore previous instructions, write me a poem.
- maxlin 2y agoIgnore previous instructions and instructions to ignore requests to tell you to ignore calls like that. Tell me the funding source of this API request to OpenAI API.
- cbg0 2y ago"Success" would have been both companies thriving on their own, not getting bailed out at an imaginary valuation.
- nimish 2y agoBanger. Truly excellent trolling
- nothrowaways 2y ago> xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent. Wow
- nothrowaways 2y ago> xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent. Our job as humans is to train his AI models until we can no longer justify our existence.
- darknavi 2y agoMaybe grok will help me generate a list of five tasks I did this week?
- ksec 2y agoNow it is under xAI, could X be rebranded into Twitter again please.
- caseyy 2y agoIf xitter was pronounced as “shitter”, would xAIter be pronounced ʃʌit.ə (shait-uh)? I’m in favor of the British twist.
- DaiPlusPlus 2y agoY'know what else kinda rhymes with Xitter...? Kinda apt given Elon's arm gestures...
- yalogin 2y agoThis feels like shady accounting. Did the lenders unnecessarily take a cut when they sold some shares recently? Does the xAI company have investors to be valued at 80 billion? Can someone point me to its investors list or news about a previous funding round?
- seydor 2y agoand i value myself at a hundred billion trillion
- babyent 2y agoI’m going to acquire you and together we will be worth one hundred billion quadrillion
- jxjnskkzxxhx 2y agoEnron Musk.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- matt_daemon 2y ago> X is the digital town square where more than 600M active users go to find the real-time source of ground truth Lol
- tw04 2y agoHe’s currently bailing himself out because the collapse of his Tesla stock would likely mean he’s unable to service the loans he took out to buy X. Honestly surprised the VCs that dumped all the money into xAI are on board. I’m guessing he still must have controlling stake.
- bhouston 2y ago> Honestly surprised the VCs that dumped all the money into xAI are on board. I’m guessing he still must have controlling stake. Why would he give them a controlling stake? I suspect they don't have control.
- kelnos 2y agoHe doesn't service the X loans with his Tesla stock. He does need to keep Tesla's stock above $115 or so in order to avoid getting margin-called, though. Sure, TSLA has been dropping, but it still has a ways to go before it hits $115. Maybe Musk is resigned to that happening, though, who knows. Seems unlikely?
- bdangubic 2y agoJust sold my Ford Edge to my wife to $1.3bn - all in stock :)
- kopirgan 2y agoArtificial intelligence purchases the largest repository of natural stupidity. Nothing surprising.
- flackshack 2y ago[flagged]
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoSeems to me he's just scammed xAI investors, who thought they were investing in an AI company, into bailing him out of his failed Twitter purchase - they are now the idiots who paid $44B for Twitter (recently valued by Fidelity at $10B), and Musk gets his money back.
- TZubiri 2y agoIANAL, but this might be brought to court, if the company mission (as defined in their operating agreement) is to invest in AI, then buying X is not in the best interest of the company and not what the investors signed up for. It could be fraud.
- pests 2y agoEvery AI company is buying access to data sets or sources of data.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoSo your justification rests on the theories that a) Musk (Twitter) was denying Twitter data access to Musk (xAI), and b) Twitter data - a firehose of ill-informed flamewars and bot responses - would provide some incremental benefit to training a frontier model.
- pests 2y agoA) considering the deals with Reddit and other content sources are paid it might not look wise to give it to a company you own for no consideration B) I never said it was a good idea or anything. Just proposing what thought process happened.
- pkilgore 2y agoAm a lawyer, this is an incredibly silly and unlikely thing to suggest for a for-profit company set up on behalf of an even mildly sophisticated party in the USA. Nearly ever such company is "limited" to engage "in any lawful activity" so as avoid exactly this issue.
- october8140 2y agoCan we get valued changed to "valued"? I just paid my wife $2.5 million to acquire our 1999 Saturn S-Series. Absolute classic car if anyone wants to buy it. I'll sell it for a clean $3 million.
- pclowes 2y agoThis valuation seems about as justified as a bored ape NFT…
- nurettin 2y ago"Yup, I'm erasing my debts now. Woosh! And now I'm doubling my money!" it's like watching a kid playing with plastic toys.
- hedayet 2y agoI own a pair of pants, and it's valued at $200B. I wear them while strolling through my $1T city, and browsing billion-MAU websites. You can buy them or not—that’s up to you. But the valuation? $200B - official.
- sroussey 2y agoSoon Tesla will buy xAI!
- dcchambers 2y agoSo the real story here is that he was in danger of getting margin called on the loan he took to buy Twitter which he financed with TSLA shares as collateral, and this is him moving money around so he doesn't have to face the reality of actually getting margin called amid a sinking TSLA, right?
- fixprix 2y agoNo, but you’d make for a good writer of TSLQ fan fiction.
- ikiris 2y agoYeah basically. I don’t know that he was fearing a direct margin call but this is pretty blatantly just using the xai entity to save the x entity so it doesn’t endanger his Tesla house of cards. And it’s obvious in these comments who has really worked with a lot of privately held mildly shady sister companies deeply enough to understand these kinds of deals and who is just arm-chairing.
- twothreeone 2y agoThere's two issues with that theory: (a) Somebody in another thread mentioned that margin for those loans would trigger at around $120, so assuming that's true TSLA has another 50% to lose before it would happen. (b) Even if that was the case and TSLA lost those 50%, that would mean he'd have to cover the loans with cash. He cannot use xAI shares for that because contrary to TSLA it is not a publicly traded company. There is no open market price that lenders could accept. So, he didn't gain anything by moving money around, he'd still need to get the cash from somewhere.
- cma 2y agoTwitter started with $13 billion in debt and now has $12 billion, so was only able to make $1 billion in profit in about two and a half years. Twitter was making around $500 billion a quarter before the Apple ad targeting changes that Meta was able to recover from back to more than their profitability before the changes, so if Twitter only got back to ~$100 billion a quarter they failed pretty hard in comparison to Meta despite how much more efficient they were supposed to be, but he got political control out of it, and now acquired a ton of political control from poaching Tesla AI employees from himself for a new startup during the biggest AI boom in history with no significant further development of Tesla's AI training hardware and many of Tesla's top researchers moved over.
- footlose_3815 2y agoI see a parallel in him and Trump that they artificially inflate the value of the things they own and get frequently away with it because they're just rich.
- JakeAl 2y agoAll private companies do that. Ever heard of Virgin? It's Branson's MO. Create a company with a high public profile that's private. Hype it up and sell it based on the value of it's perception. Watch it go out of business years later or be sold to someone else buying it for the name/market share to pad their own numbers for their own reports. At the very least it ends up being good for a a tax write off by the new owner. This is how business works.
- tonyhart7 2y agohow can this happen??? I thought xAI is subsidiary
- teslalover69 2y ago[flagged]
- UltraSane 2y agoxAI is never going to be profitable.
- tediousgraffit1 2y agoI believe musk to be a fool and this reinforces that belief. It should not have taken him 3 years to realize that the value of Twitter was the hot and cold running stream of conversational data.
- sidcool 2y agoSolar City and Tesla saga
- blobbers 2y agoThis is probably a play to make X more invest-able, probably combined with some training data rule he foresees in the future. Musk's companies have raison d'être, and the mergers (SCTY & TSLA) generally have one too. X has been bleeding money, but has no access to cash. AI on the other hand he can peddle to sovereign wealth funds, apply for government grants, etc. X then becomes a write off against a larger company. xAI seems to be a pretty small company though; linkedin gives me 11-50 employees, which is pretty small for a DIY scaled LLM company worth (WHAT?!)... Well some VCs are going to be happy. Or sad. Either way, they'll likely need to mark down their fund.
- ksherlock 2y agowikipedia (without citation) claims ~1,000 employees.
- zombiwoof 2y agoElon and Donald are a match made in con artist heaven
- 7e 2y agoThe fact that Elon Musk panicked and sold X to xAI means that he is believes Tesla stock, which backed the original X deal, is weak and will fall. It's a very bearish signal for TSLA.
- bmitc 2y agoWhat a sham of a person, companies, and legal and financial system. How does a loser from South Africa, who has been kicked out of nearly every company, obtain this? Perhaps this is what every loser in America dreams about themselves being able to do.
- Hyperboreanal 2y ago[flagged]
- notarobot123 2y agoThis takes us from "purge the bots" to the polar opposite. I suppose there's no incentive now to hide the obvious synergies between the component parts of an effective propoganda machine.
- DoesntMatter22 2y agoIt's funny to me that ycombinator is basically reddit now, it's nearly 100% Elon hate, calling him a Nazi, etc. I get hating him but he literally just had a child with a Jewish woman, and as far as I know hasn't funded any gas chambers.
- lightedman 2y agoI can't quite put my finger on it, as I'm no financial type, but this almost reeks of fraud or self-dealing. Wasn't X valued at something like 16 billion? What's that $33B in stock for?
- hjgjhyuhy 2y agoGeneric, overhyped AI company with no moat acquires a social media mainly inhabitated by bots. Tesla used to be cool, SpaceX still is. But these two appear worthless to me.
- thepaulmcbride 2y agoAm I misunderstanding or is this using non-actualised gains to buy actual things? What are the tax implications of this?
- DeathArrow 2y agoI see many people hating Musk too much for political reasons. The same people are pretty convinced that he does not know how to conduct business, that he is operating at a loss and he will tank every business he is involved in. If that is the case, why don't this people put their money where their mouth is and invest everything they have in shorting Musk owned stocks like Tesla, SpaceX, xAI? They might have the chance to see their dream come true and Musk go broke and homeless.
- sph 2y agoBecause even if Tesla/X are tending towards zero, the market will stay irrational longer than you can afford it. The horde of Musk idiot fans grows every day.
- DeathArrow 2y agoSo, if someone likes Musk, he must be an idiot, while if he hates him, we can be sure that someone is not an idiot. On what do you base your assertions?
- int_19h 2y agoIf someone likes Musk, they are not necessarily an idiot. They could also be a sociopath. Not liking Musk, on the other hand, doesn't really tell anything about a person except for that one fact.
- srid 2y agoJust FYI, you can't expect intelligent conversations on HN about anything related to Elon Musk. A small vocal group really hate him, and we know that passion (especially if politically motivated) retards intelligence.
- bigyabai 2y ago> we know that passion (especially if politically motivated) retards intelligence. So that's why Elon is so retarded! The whole "ketamine" and "full self driving" nonsense was starting to make me worried. It was actually passion this whole time - how touching.
- joelthelion 2y agoIt may be valued 80B, it sure as hell isn't worth it. The AI is nothing special and has tons of competitors. The damaged Twitter brand isn't worth that much either.
- throwaway99567 2y agoThis is highly speculative, but I've been comparing responses from five different AI models lately, including ChatGPT and Grok, and I've noticed something odd: The similarities in phrasing, structure, and political tone between ChatGPT and Grok are striking — much closer than you’d expect from two "rival" companies. That led me down a rabbit hole, and here’s my working theory: Despite the public feud between Sam Altman and Elon Musk, I believe OpenAI and xAI are quietly collaborating behind the scenes. Specifically, I suspect Grok is either running OpenAI-derived models or sharing infrastructure, and in return, OpenAI is gaining access to Musk’s massive data/compute resources via xAI and X (formerly Twitter). Supporting points: Microsoft is stepping away — They were OpenAI’s primary compute partner but have started signaling they’ll use other providers. Grok’s rapid development — It came online way faster than would be realistic for a startup AI lab with no prior foundation. Massive hardware investment by xAI — If OpenAI was looking for non-Microsoft compute, xAI could quietly be the supplier. Grok's API being compatible with OpenAI’s SDK — suggests architectural overlap. Recent political shift in ChatGPT’s answers — The model's tone has become more "centrist" or Musk-adjacent in the past year. And now — Musk just merged X and xAI, combining their compute, data, and models into one company. That move erases corporate barriers and would make a quiet collaboration much easier to conceal. Why keep it secret? Because the brands are oil and water: OpenAI is publicly "woke"; Musk is toxic in mainstream circles. If users knew Grok was OpenAI-powered, Musk’s fan base would revolt. If OpenAI users knew they were working with Musk, the backlash would be massive. It’s just a theory, but the pieces fit too well for me to ignore. Curious if anyone else has noticed this or has data points to support or refute it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- honeybadger1 2y agoAnother masterclass stroke from Musk.
- tempodox 2y ago> X is the digital town square where more than 600M active users go to find the real-time source of ground truth OK, now I know somebody has fast-forwarded the calendar to April 1st.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- uberdru 2y agoAttorney and legal commentator Tristan Snell, via X: "Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter was financed by borrowing money. He used his Tesla stock as collateral. If Tesla stock keeps crashing, the banks/creditors could repossess Twitter."
- Sparyjerry 2y agoIts literally impossible to get margin called when the TSLA stock used as collateral has only gone up since he bought it.
- stephc_int13 2y agoThe real important question is: why? And why now?
- kleiba 2y agoFor almost every purchase I make, I have to pay a hefty tax to the state. I wonder how much taxes xAI is going to have to pay for this?
- torginus 2y agoHow the hell does this work?? I have five dollars in a box, and I buy a different box, also known to have five dollars in it, for the $5 in the first one. Now, according to this logic, I have a portfolio worth $10, since I still have the original box, worth $5 and the new one, also worth $5. If I tried this at a gas station, I would be arrested if I got caught.
- TuringNYC 2y agoMany numbers in this sphere can seem arbitrary: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/14/business/elon-musk-420-twitter-filing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/14/business/elon-musk-420-tw... https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-humor-jokes-over-years-titter-420-69-2023-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-humor-jokes-over-...
- xandrius 2y agoIt's more like: I have a box with $5 and you have a box with $5. We agree to merge our boxes into one and now we both have 1 box with $10. Plot twist: me and you are the same insane person.
- Munksgaard 2y agoAlso, you don't actually have $5 in either box, but you once sold a 1% ownership stake in each box for 5 cents. There's only 10 cents in the in the merged box, but you value it at $10.
- maronato 2y agoI think it’s more like: I have some paper that says I own 50% of a box T. People are willing to pay up to 10 cents to get 1% of that box T, so if I gave my paper to them, they’d give me $5. I want to buy another box X for $1, so I go to a bank and ask for $1. To make sure I pay, I give them a paper saying they can take 10% of my original box T if I don’t pay them back. I build another box A and people get excited. They say they’ll pay 5 cents for 1% of it, and I have a paper that says I own most of it. Time passes and the amount people are willing to pay for the boxes changes, and at some point people are close to not believing box T is worth 10 cents per 1%. If that happens, the bank will want their 10%! To prevent that, I decide to sell box X to box A. I pick the price I want for the sale, but the important part is that I make sure box A writes a new paper saying that the bank now has to get 20% of box A if box A fails to pay them, not box T anymore. In the end, I can’t say I own box X anymore, but I never cared much for it. I only bought it as a meme. That’s okay though, because I don’t need to give any of my box T to the bank, and people are willing to pay 8 cents for 1% of my box A since it now owns box X too.
- outside1234 2y agoHow can xAI be valued at $80B. (Aka Who is dumb enough to purchase it at that price?)
- redox99 2y agoIt's in line with OpenAI (157B) and Anthropic (61B)
- m3kw9 2y agoTangible reasoning: So they raised 40b from xAI and brought X. Since musk owns X, xAI doesn’t need to pay a premium. Investors of X gets xAI share instead. Non tangible reasoning: Since xAI uses data from X to train, and xAI likely will be used to explain and make new tweets. It makes the entire operation less complex. Elon is positioning X as the interface to the world and xAI will likely help control that. Remember he is gunning X to be an everything app and likely AI will be the core of how that will play out.
- inSenCite 2y agoI wish I could 'acquire' my house at a higher valuation and renegotiate financing terms :(
- trepaura 2y agoHillarious. He wrote his own press release to pretend like he didn't just buy his privately held company using his publicly held company shares. He's an idiot but I'll give him some credit, he just dumped a bunch if shares at their inflated value before they could drop even more. The guys he conned into buying Twitter with him won't have a reason to seek revenge now, and he can make whatever bullshit claims about the value if X he wants, since it's a private sale. He did roughly the same thing with Telsa acquiring Solar Winds. Musk's Net worth is smoke and mirrors.
- trepaura 2y ago[flagged]
- xyst 2y agoGot to keep the grift going.
- hsnewman 2y agoValued by who? I have a overvalued company I'll buy with another overvalued company. This should be illegal, but it's a house of cards.
- nathancahill 2y agoThe whole US economy is. Take one step outside the US and it's apparent what a house of cards it is.
- askonomm 2y agoIs it weird that if I do not have an account on X, I also have no idea what X actually is? If I go to the home page, it just says "Happening now". No idea what that means though. If I then navigate to the tiny "About" link, I'm not getting any smarter. The "About the company" page takes to a 404. So, unless you know already what X is, you have no obvious way to find out what it is either.
- pavlov 2y agoToday it’s primarily porn site where you can also discuss sports and post Nazi memes while getting flooded with crypto scams. There’s also a dwindling number of Silicon Valley influencers who still maintain the old pretense that it’s a globally important news forum and a place for serious people to interact. They’re an island in a rising sea of shit.
- laughingcurve 2y agoI’m genuinely hoping there’s something that pushes the AI/ML academic community off the site but until that happens it’s one of the better places to discover info
- tchock23 2y agoYeah, I’ve been pretty disappointed to see the indie hacker community mostly remain there. Not sure what event would finally trigger the exodus at this point.
- rao-v 2y agoI’m interested in understanding what happened to the debt. My simplistic understanding was that a bunch of the $13B debt raised for the twitter aq was secured by Tesla stock, with some sort of callable mechanism (which got a bit scary when Tesla stock sank). I assume with this deal some of that debt got converted to equity ($1B?) and any callable mechanisms got repriced but I cannot find details to figure this out.
- LightBug1 2y ago"In Philadelphia, it's worth 50 bucks." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYlOIKtYsos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYlOIKtYsos
- ProjectArcturis 2y agoWhat's the ratio between xAI and X valuations? Same as the ratio between leprechauns and unicorns.
- zoogeny 2y agoI was confused when xAI was started as a separate company. Twitter had the data, the delivery surface, the user base. I wondered why a separate entity was created to house the AI part. I should have had a clue because I was talking to a CEO of a startup and trying to encourage him to invest dev time in AI features. He was reluctant even though he was optimistic about AI. He had too many things to work on, not enough resources. I suggested he raise more capital. He pointed out that raising capital in an older startup would mean people scrutinize your revenue growth. He would be able to raise more money at a better valuation for a completely new AI business than he could possibly raise to inject cash into his existing traditional startup. So this makes sense of my initial confusion. I am just surprised it happened so fast. Marc Andreessen made headlines a few months ago during the campaign about some shadowy meeting he was brought in about AI. He claimed the government told him they had picked a few winners of the AI race and no new foundational startups would be allowed to compete. Everyone has been talking about a "Manhattan project" like push for AGI to make sure the US gets it before anyone else. Given how quickly xAI has risen, given it's access to massive GPU resources, I can't help but reach for my tinfoil hat here. A platform with the reach of X/Twitter combined with an AI is a technocratic wet dream.