Billionaire Elon Musk announced Friday his AI company xAI has acquired X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter.
Musk, who also owns X, says xAI paid for the acquisition in a $45 billion all-stock deal, which includes $12 billion in debt.
"xAI and X’s futures are intertwined," Musk said in a statement on the acquisition. "Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent. This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach."
X has already incorporated Grok, the AI chatbot developed by xAI. It's not yet clear how an acquisition would change the use of AI tools on X.
Musk's AI company recently secured $6 billion in investment funding for a valuation around $40 billion. In Friday's message, Musk claimed xAI, when combined with X, is now worth around $80 billion.
Fidelity, which helped Musk finance his purchase of Twitter, valued X at a little more than $12 billion at the beginning of the year.
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Musk bought X, then Twitter, in 2022 for $44 billion.
Musk laid off some 80% of company staff and made other changes to company policies, including the reactivation of White supremacist accounts. Extremism watchdogs say under Musk's leadership, misinformation and anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech have become more common on the platform.
