xAI has acquired X, xAI now valued at $80B • Hacker News Board

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

#601

Post by kelnos » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 5:05 AM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #449

intuitionist wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The outside investors in X made a profit on paper; Twitter was bought for $44B but the deal was financed with like $31B in equity and $13B in debt. It’s not a big profit (in fact it’s worse than you would have done in T-bills), and of course they’re swapping one illiquid and hard-to-value asset for another, but Elon isn’t giving them a 25% haircut at all.

Isn't Twitter's stock price higher than it was at acquisition?

As the sibling pointed out, private companies don't have stock prices. But I've read estimates that Twitter is worth less $10B now, so less than a quarter what Musk paid for it.

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

#602

Post by numpad0 » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 5:06 AM UTC

spiderice wrote: post #155

saltysalt wrote: post #118

X users are now officially just training data for Grok.

The comment you just wrote is training data for every major LLM out there.

But the difference is, Twitter users leave way too much into situational context for an LLM to comprehend, and so...

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

#603

Post by kelnos » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 5:06 AM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #126

mingus88 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah 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 h…

That military apparatus is sworn to uphold the Constitution, not support the current president.

That only works until Trump finishes purging the upper ranks of the military, and then gets the Senate to promote Trump loyalists to take their place.

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

#604

Post by TheAlchemist » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 5:07 AM UTC

rqtwteye wrote: post #370

TheAlchemist wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/28/trump-pardon-bitmex-crypto-e...

Is Bankman-Fried next?

I 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...

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

#605

Post by kelnos » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 5:10 AM UTC

nozzlegear wrote: post #506

coliveira wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be realistic: Congress has given away its power for decades. It is nowadays a Congress permanently divided and pretty much non-functional.

Congress has never had the power to command the military, that's not one of the powers granted to it in the constitution.

Trump may be Commander in Chief, but he cannot start a war without Congress' approval.

Unfortunately, they've essentially given more or less blanket approval for various wars and war-like actions since before 9/11, and that approval keeps getting renewed every year.

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

#606

Post by Hyperboreanal » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 5:12 AM UTC

bayarearefugee wrote: post #79

saaaaaam wrote: post #48

So 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.

Welcome 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.

Capitalism will fall in 2 more weeks comrade, trust the plan

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

#607

Post by bmitc » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 5:14 AM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #553

mingus88 wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Trump was prosecuted.

They meant criminally prosecuted, which he was not.

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

#608

Post by fastball » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 5:16 AM UTC

rozap wrote: post #344

bhouston wrote: post #29

He 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-belea... There were a few lawsuits from Tesla shareholders about the acquisition regarding se…

My guess is that there's an added grift, er...benefit here; since the federal government is now (apparently) in the business of subsidizing AI companies, we'll effectively see the failing social media platform get subsidized by the federal government. I'm certain we'll see a pile of public funds handed over the xAI in the future.

Isn't X more profitable than Twitter was?

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

#609

Post by Hyperboreanal » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 5:16 AM UTC

Henchman21 wrote: post #133

saaaaaam wrote: post #48

So 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.

Its almost like modern life is riddled with lies, liars, and their collective bullshit. I don’t think this is a change in the human condition; we’re extremely greedy hairless apes. But guys like Elon really show how low we can go.

[flagged]

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

#610

Post by jfoster » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 5:17 AM UTC

whats_a_quasar wrote: post #350

_ea1k wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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.

Oh yeah I totally agree with that framing. I find this fascinating intellectually because of the deal dynamics and worthy of critique but agree that the tone of some of the commentary is a bit silly. It's a really unethical thing to do, but it's all private capital and everyone with exposure knowingly made the choice to go into business with Musk. They can sue and definitely will win if Musk did cross any legal lines…

What makes it unethical? For all we know, the private investors are all in agreement on this. Musk tends to take capital from investors that he is on very good terms with. There's most likely a lot of overlap between investors of both companies.