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

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

#651

Post by kelnos » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 6:30 AM UTC

uxcolumbo wrote: post #323

ein0p wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See the leaderboard tab here: 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.

I think it’s important to not support products by people who want to destroy democracy and who openly sieg heiling or claiming Hitler wasn’t responsible for the Holocaust.

Agreed, but that's not really related to the question at hand.

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

#652

Post by ActorNightly » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 6:31 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #625

ActorNightly wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is precisely why there won't be 2026 and 2028 elections. I dunno why people are pretending this is just 4 years of Trump. He tried to overthrow the results before, and this time around, he has support of all 3 branches and players like Elon Musk. US is going to do the same thing Russia did with Putin. If we end up having elections, its actually gonna be worse of long term, because despite tanking economy, most…

The main difference between the US and Russia in this regard is that the US federal government has very little say or control over what are state-run elections. Solidly red states don't need election interference; they're going to vote red. Solidly blue states aren't going to tolerate interference. The handful or so of swing states will be watched incredibly closely by everyone else for even a hint of interference. >…

Ok and what are states gonna do when Trump arrests the electors? Secede?

Look at what Dems are doing now. AoC and Bernie are hosting rallies - i.e being worthless.

States will roll over, because day to day business is gotta continue.

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

#653

Post by jraph » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 6:31 AM UTC

solean wrote: post #638

bmitc wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is he really rich? He started a car company, one that is known to make shit cars. All of their big bets failed. So what was supposed to be "not just a car comoany", which is what all the insane valuations were based on, is now "just a car comoany" and a shit one at that. So why is this car comoany still valuated at such insane hype levels? Is his wealth not entirely tied to the hyper-valuation of this car company?

Is spelling "company" really that hard?

It's probably just a typo, O is next to P on keyboards, mistakes happen.

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

#654

Post by kelnos » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 6:34 AM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #387

He’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.

He 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?

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

#655

Post by notarobot123 » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 6:35 AM UTC

This 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.

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

#656

Post by tsimionescu » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 6:36 AM UTC

chatmasta wrote: post #469

TheAlchemist wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just keep in mind this is all funny money ! The valuation of those 2 companies combined should be X is heavily in debt, diminishing user base, and bleeding money. 0 profits xAI is yet to make any actual revenues outside of ... X. Also bleeding money Although I would admit, that these companies are not valued based by their economics, but rather on political power they provide to the owner.

This doesn’t strike me as an objective assessment of the state of affairs. You could make the same “bleeding money” comment about many historical social media acquisitions – at least Twitter has advertising and subscription revenue. And it’s similarly suspect to argue that xAI is failing due to lack of revenue, without mentioning the astronomical valuations of its peers in the AI space, many of which are not only lac…

You're missing the fact that Twitter has essentially 0 advertising revenue compared to the other major social networks, as all major ad networks have stopped doing business with Twitter (this in turn being because of the very high likelihood that their ads would be shown next to content that their clients didn't want to be associated with, such as images of Hitler).

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

#657

Post by kristjansson » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 6:36 AM UTC

maxlin wrote: post #300

saltysalt wrote: post #118

X users are now officially just training data for Grok.

With that logic Github, StackOverflow, rest of internet is also "only" training data. X just produces extra valuable training data as a byproduct. Like power plants create certain byproducts that can be sold etc. Good to see it going to Grok primarily, as other LLM's are far from being truth seeking with their built-in, documented, extreme bias.

Aligning with the distribution you happened to be able to sample from is not 'truth seeking'.

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

#658

Post by danmaz74 » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 6:37 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #605

nozzlegear wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He can't start a war, but what about special military operations?

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

#659

Post by kelnos » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 6:37 AM UTC

hatsix wrote: post #277

ergocoder wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then, they would vote democrats. This might actually help democrats win presidency.

Just like Puerto Rico and DC?

Puerto Rico and DC don't get to vote in Congressional elections. Well, not for seats that get votes, anyway. But yes, if PR and DC were granted statehood, we'd have 3 or 4 more Democrats in the Senate, and some number of new House districts, the majority of which likely sending Democrats to the House.

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

#660

Post by rockskon » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 6:38 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's a fantasy military leaders like to tell troops.

Let's hope we won't how that plays out against against the reality of having bills to pay and family members to take care of after enough layers of leadership has been replaced.