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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

#941

Post by TeaBrain »

electriclove wrote: post #442
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #417

Seems 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.

These xAI investors are not regular paycheck people. If they aren’t happy, this deal would not have happened. If they lose money, who cares.

Unlike the shareholders of a company being acquired, the shareholders of an acquiring company do not need to be asked prior to the company making an acquisition.

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

#942

Post by grandempire »

skinnymuch wrote: post #694
grandempire wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How does grand parent know solar city is responsible for the net income?

That wasn’t the claim. They just speculated that acquiring one solar company helped in their other solar ventures, which seems like a good default assumption.

If you have evidence that’s not the case, that would be interesting to share.

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

#943

Post by xinan »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #856
haliskerbas wrote: post #841

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought self dealing was usually illegal. I can’t sell my family member my house for $1 for example. But you can do the same thing with companies?

> I can’t sell my family member my house for $1 for example In most countries you absolutely can. The difference between market value and the sale price might be considered and taxed as a gift, but such a deal is generally not prohibited.

If I overpay for a house, shouldn’t it be taxed as a gift too? :p

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

#944

Post by refulgentis »

grandempire wrote: post #942
skinnymuch wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does grand parent know solar city is responsible for the net income?

That wasn’t the claim. They just speculated that acquiring one solar company helped in their other solar ventures, which seems like a good default assumption. If you have evidence that’s not the case, that would be interesting to share.

I wrote a comment 2 hours before the initial comment in this subthread that explains Tesla held in court that Solar City ended up contributing nothing because it needed to be liquidated immediately lest Tesla go bankrupt. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/how-elon-musk-gamble...

For what it's worth, I don't even know what the inverse position would be, SolarCity was a solar panel maker, and famously, the idea after they realized they couldn't come close to China's prices, was solar roof tiles. They would be a major breakthrough project that would make Solar City a breakout financial hit.

Do people think Tesla makes solar panels? Solar roofs?

I don't blame them, I guess, this carnival has been going on for years.

I'm somewhat surprised how dedicated you are to avoiding information and asking for someone, anyone, to give info. It's been 18 hours and 3 replies on your end, albeit without people taking the time to spell it out to you like this. Personally, I would have looked into it a bit myself.

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

#945

Post by Zigurd »

j4coh wrote: post #823
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I smell margin call desperation. Musk got visibly worried with tanking Tesla stock and pulled out some crazy stops to keep Tesla afloat. Remember, these megabillionaires are due to stock valuations, and live rich lifestyles on the basis of lending against the value of stock. If that value drops and a margin call forces actual selling, then Musk loses shares in Tesla. I have to think this stunt is related to Musk need…

If it’s an all stock acquisition did it generate any liquidity?

Sort of: it put Twitter's LBO debt on X.ai's books. I strongly suspect Elon had been lending X money to cover interest payments. Both X.ai and X are privately held, so specifics will be hard to come by.

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

#946

Post by cma »

trollied wrote: post #806
cma wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter 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 M…

> Twitter was making around $500 billion a quarter Huh?

million

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

#947

Post by zoogeny »

I 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.

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

#948

Post by onemoresoop »

baggachipz wrote: post #924
lukevp wrote: post #904

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They started selling FSD back in like 2017 and it was supposed to be self-driving ALL THE TIME by 2019. It’s 8 years later now and the best you’ve got is “upgrade the hardware to version 4 and you can make a 25 mile commute without disengagement” when Tesla was promising cross-continent summoning so you could fly somewhere and your car would drive there to meet you, charging along the way. That’s L5 autonomy. The del…

I was intent on keeping my low-vin release day Model 3 until they made good on their FSD promise, come hell or high water. Then The Salute and The Infomercial happened, and I gave up and ditched the car like a psycho girlfriend. They got my money and I was fooled by a con. I'll never let that happen again.

You sold it though or did you literally ditch it?

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

#949

Post by laughingcurve »

pavlov wrote: post #896
askonomm wrote: post #885

Is 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.

Today 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.

I’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

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

#950

Post by soulofmischief »

claytongulick wrote: post #850
soulofmischief wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

When I read your comment, what I see is "I checked through their comment history. They disagree with my political viewpoint, so I'm going to use the popular talking points from my in-group to attack them." I glanced through your comment history as well, and I'm convinced that you are a lot smarter than that, and can add more to the conversation.

> popular talking points from my in-group to attack them

Pointing out that we're currently being de facto ruled by a circle of wealthy billionaires and millionaires is not a "talking point". This comes across as projection.

> I'm convinced that you are a lot smarter than that

Thank you. I'm not sure what you're looking for me to add to the conversation however, I just plainly said what I saw, which was them to bat for several oligarchs who are currently making a mockery of our country.

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