Elon Musk has sold social media site X to his own xAI artificial intelligence company in a $33 billion all-stock deal, the billionaire announced on Friday.
    • Laser@feddit.orgEnglish
      1011·
      12 days ago

      Well, not really. Twitter was his own private property that he bought with borrowed money secured against his Tesla shares. xAI on the other hand is financed by investors whose money he used to bail himself out at a price he made up himself since Twitter is no longer publicly traded. So this is, in my opinion, misuse of investor funds; the picture would be true if xAI used how own money to do this, but no.

      On one hand,I think this is serious fraud. On the other, my understanding for anyone investing into his companies is very limited, there are so many red flags on so many levels.

      • gencha@lemm.eeEnglish
        221·
        11 days ago

        To understand Musk/Trump investors, imagine the investment to be an NFT.

      • sporkler@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        11 days ago

        I suspect the government(s) that represent the bulk of the funds behind xAI threw the money out to continue operating exactly as he has been.

        • klu9@lemmy.caEnglish
          2·
          11 days ago

          They thought all they were getting was a piece of the latest hype. Now they’ve got leverage over the entire govt of the United Fucking States!

  • Stalinwolf@lemmy.caEnglish
    1141·
    12 days ago

    His juvenile enthusiasm for the letter X is so ten-year-old boy with sunglasses.

  • halfapage@lemmy.worldEnglish
    62·
    11 days ago

    Funny that people take this news as some kind of technological fusion between companies and not housekeeping of the dipshit’s personal finances.

    • alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      38·
      12 days ago

      Correct.

      It’s actually a smart move.

      The dumb money are those pouring hundreds of billions into the AI hype. This is .com bubble on steroids.

      And sure, AI obviously is becoming an important market, but it will not be the current leaders who will dominate the tech. Like the internet, it’s just too easy to catch up for competitors. Pouring $100B into AI today will only mean you lose out to the $1B startup in 2 years. The incumbents will go broke.

      • cm0002@lemmy.worldEnglish
        14·
        12 days ago

        The incumbents will go broke.

        Can’t wait! Gonna stock up on some popcorn lmao

      • golli@lemm.eeEnglish
        41·
        12 days ago

        The incumbents will go broke.

        Who do you mean with that? Companies like OpenAI or Anthropic, or do you also include the likes of Google/Amazon/Microsoft?

        With the former I can see it, but the later also profit from providing the infrastructure (and have other profitable business), so imo those will be just fine.

        • alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          5·
          11 days ago

          I definitely see Google/Amazon/Microsoft shedding a huge amount of market cap when the time comes to write-off the 100s of billions they invested the past two years.

          They just don’t have any feasible path to recouping those investments.

          Sure, they’ll never go fully broke, that’s just a nice word for emphasis.

          • Kushan@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            11 days ago

            I actually think Google is going to win this one, they’re the only ones making their own hardware to run their own models. Open ai are starting down that road but they’re years behind.

            When you look at the pricing of all the AI companies, Google’s is so much cheaper (orders of magnitude) and they’re not having to pay Nvidia billions to do it.

          • thejml@lemm.eeEnglish
            23·
            12 days ago

            So far I’ve seen/heard Elon:

            • Start shitty arguments
            • Be a fascist
            • Fire people they probably needed
            • Cut funding or drop useful projects
            • Spew senseless, poorly thought out catch phases
            • Censor people that were right but didn’t align with his narrative
            • Take credit for other people’s work
            • Pass the blame for failures

            Have yet to see him sign a check… it’s why they lost their boulder office, for instance.

          • TheFriar@lemm.eeEnglish
            12·
            12 days ago

            He’s an egotist and a man child, while also being the richest man in the world. All he has to do is say he wants something and people have to do it. He doesn’t have to “do” anything to be fully influencing what happens. Look at Twitter, look at the federal government. Sycophants surround these assholes and basically have to bend the knee and do what they say. When capital equals power, this is what happens. Just like when blood line meant power, the kings didn’t “do” anything. But the people who took their orders from them did.

          • Arbiter@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            11 days ago

            Yeah, he yells at people to go faster and ignore industry best standards or be fired.

          • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            3·
            12 days ago

            I mean, I think that’s their point, that Elon isn’t directly involved, and he’s constantly shitcanning important people who would prevent something like this happening.

  • SunshineJogger@feddit.orgEnglish
    37·
    12 days ago

    Very likely this will turn out to be a broken and bugged version of skynet, trained on X toxicity and the mental aptitude of a 12 year old.

    It will proceed to try to enslave humanity, then try to kill us all but accidentally spend all its money on gender affirming care, then start to self hate and destroy itsself.

    • dmtalon@infosec.pubEnglish
      8·
      12 days ago

      Well, was skynet what Humans wanted? Or was it bugged and broken which led to the rebellion?

      My point is, is it just “skynet” (no additional adjectives required)

  • ChicoSuave@lemmy.worldEnglish
    28·
    11 days ago

    Is this so the loans secured with X stock can’t be called in, forcing Elon to sell the collateral to pay back the loan?

    Sure seems like a bullshit business move to retain control of Tesla.

  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    15·
    12 days ago

    I keep wondering what Elon wanted with all of our information from the government. He has who we are, our relatives, our net worth, where we live and have lived. Now he’s probably going to feed it into his AI. Why though?

  • Darkassassin07@lemmy.caEnglish
    141·
    12 days ago

    $33 billion, 3/4 what it was valued in 2022 when he bought it.

    Honestly I’m surprised it’s still worth that much. (or rather, that’s he’s succeeded in claiming it’s worth that much).

    • Redditsux@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      17·
      12 days ago

      You have to remember that he wasn’t alone in purchasing twitter. He brought others along with him. Now that value of twitter has gone down the tube, I’m sure he’s got a ton of unhappy investors on his hand screaming at every quarter’s results. He’s trying to recoup what they paid for by giving them shares in AI company. And in turn artificially raise the value of the AI company privately as well. It establishes a benchmark for AI company’s valuation for later private investors into that company.

    • athairmor@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      12 days ago

      xAI has raised maybe $12B from investors. And, supposedly, makes $100M/yr.

      The valuations are absurd.

    • Vash63@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      11 days ago

      It dropped a lot lower than that but spiked back up once he became the leader of America

  • athairmor@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    12 days ago

    I’m surprised the Twitter investors would approve this. Their worthless Twitter stock is now worthless xAI stock. How does that help them?

    I guess they’ll try to take xAI public with a massively overpriced IPO.

    • golli@lemm.eeEnglish
      10·
      12 days ago

      I am more surprised xAI investors approved. Especially for such a high price.

      Twitter actually imo had (and still has) quite a bit of value, but that is only to further Elons ideological goals. As a business it is on a downward trend and was never a cash cow to begin with. Comparatively little room for speculation. It’s a stagnating or declining business and doesn’t generate large profits if any.

      xAI on the other hand is pretty much in the same spot as most other ai companies. It has yet to prove to be a highly profitable business, but there is plenty of room for speculation. So as long as the bubble doesn’t burst, it has a high valuation.

      Which is all that would matter for any Twitter investor that wants to unload his shares. Although I doubt it would be via ipo, but rather in private funding rounds.

    • Pennomi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      12 days ago

      The whole point of buying Twitter was to take it private. IPO for xAI would hilariously undo that.

    • Moonrise2473@feddit.itEnglish
      2·
      12 days ago

      Xitter investors got scammed and there was no way that xitter would be able to pay 1 billion per year in interest. Better having someone else holding the bag

  • caffinatedone@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    12 days ago

    Since it’s a money hole just like all of the other “AI” companies, who’s funding xAI and what are they getting out of being a slush fund for musk?

    • Snowstorm@lemmy.caEnglish
      14·
      11 days ago

      Restructuration of ownership and debt so that if Tesla fails he get to keep his assets in his other non public companies. At one point Tesla stock was leveraged to buy Twitter, i think that Elon shielded his assets because Tesla is way too exposed.