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xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B

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Re: xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B

#521
post #9

What is the play here? Using money invested in xAI and its inflated valuation to bail out the X investors?

That and the data that is a part of X can be used by the xAI team. I expect it will be in the TOS if it isn't there already. "xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent."

I don’t really see how X data, being riddled with spam and bots, is all that uniquely useful to an AI company. Even if it was, it’s not all that clear that access to data is a defensible moat.

Re: xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B

#522

A 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!

>A story about the most destructive man in the history of high technology This seems a bit, uh, hyperbolic

You're right. He's high on ketamine not technology.

Re: xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B

#523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The commenter also included past presidents, which is silly. Once a president is a past president, he no longer controls that military apparatus.

The U.S. will never allow any former president to get prosecuted because the precedent is too severe. By all reasonable accounts, GW Bush should have been prosecuted for war crimes. Trump should have been prosecuted the moment he left office for a spectrum of crimes. There is even a strong argument that Obama should have been prosecuted for drone strikes on citizen combatants. But power protects power, and the moment…

Nixon certainly would've been prosecuted if he hadn't been pardoned.

> There is even a strong argument that Obama should have been prosecuted for drone strikes on citizen combatants.

I don't think this is very strong at all. There is zero evidence that Obama intentionally targeted civilians outside of al-Awlaki. Suggesting that he did, and that he should be prosecuted for war crimes, puts him in the same moral category as those who ordered actual torture on enemy combatants and launched wars on fabricated evidence. It's preposterous.

Re: xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B

#524
post #447

It 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.

> 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…

I 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.

Re: xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B

#525
post #84

With 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.

The grok thing feels as forced and useless as every other AI feature by every other company. This has "sure buddy" vibes all over it.

I actually find the "Explain this post" feature pretty nice.

Re: xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B

#526
post #73
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla shares are higher now than they were when he closed on Twitter in October 2022.

Heck, TSLA today is higher than on 5 November 2024, less than five months ago!

And it's ~40% lower since the "roman" salute day. Anyone can pick random dates.

Re: xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B

#527
post #419
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla bought Solar City for $2.6 billion, and now it looks like the Tesla Energy division had about that much in net income last year alone.

None of that is solar roofs. That product never worked. It's nearly all batteries. The Solar City was worthless and it hasn't improved.

How do you know which assets and people were useful on which projects?

Re: xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B

#528

Does 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.)

All 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

Re: xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B

#530

It 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.

The WSJ article says that most of the minority non-musk investors of xAI are also non-Musk investors of Twitter. So they are self dealing as well. It is just one giant orgy of self dealing. Apologies about the mental image.
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