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Elon Musk has made a shock move by selling prized-asset X (formerly Twitter) for a staggering $45,000,000,000, although the new owner might end up surprising you.
It's been a rocky two and a half years for Elon Musk as head of Twitter, as the site has gone through a number of controversial changes that have inspired several phoenix sites to house social media 'refugees' who desire to leave the confines of X.
Advertiser boycotts, an influx of bots, and a reported value decline of 72% in just two years have earmarked a rough period for Musk's X, but many also agree that his control over the popular social media platform played a key role in Donald Trump's US election victory late last year.
Despite estimates that X was worth around only $12.3 billion last December, Musk has somehow sold the company for $45 billion this month - which staggeringly represents a profit - although the person on the other side of the negotiating table gives an indication as to how this was possible.
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@xAI has acquired @X in an all-stock transaction. The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45B less $12B debt).
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 28, 2025
Since its founding two years ago, xAI has rapidly become one of the leading AI labs in the world, building models and data centers at…
As reported by the BBC, the acquisition of X was made by xAI, which is Elon Musk's own artificial intelligence company, and you have to imagine that they were negotiating up until the early hours of the morning.
"xAI has acquired X in an all-stock transaction," Musk revealed in a post on the social media site last Friday, revealing that "the combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45B less $12B debt)."
xAI through AI chatbot Grok has become a prominent part of the X experience, as not only are you able to chat with Grok, creating pictures and even engaging in an '18+ sexy mode', but users are also able to create requests in the replies to posts.
Musk continued to outline: "xAI and X's future's are intertwined. 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.
I would like to recognize the hardcore dedication of everyone at xAI and X that has brought us to this point," Musk added. "This is just the beginning."
Understandably, many online have been left confused as to how this is possible, with one Reddit user left particularly stunned at the practicalities surrounding the sale:
"Listen I don't know too much about business or really anything about stocks but how in the actual f*** do you buy your own comapny from yourself using ONLY stock???"
Many have come to the replies to offer their own interpretation of the events, with one explanation being that it's a 'merge via swap'.
"Company A gives an amount of its stock for Company B's stock," the comment illustrates, revealing that "the implication here is that the shareholders of Company B believe that merging will get them richer faster."
Another has broken down that it's not as simple as Musk transferring stocks from one pocket of his pants to the other. "He isn't buying just from himself. He wasn't the sole shareholder of either of those companies [...] All stocks buyback in this situation is just that everyone who owns shares in X will get a specific number of stocks in xAI based on their relative valuation."
While many remain skeptical considering the fact that only recently X held a far lower valuation, it's a move that appears to only benefit those currently in possession of either company's stock.
