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

Lawsuits can fail for lots of reasons without a decision on the merits. It seems relevant that the reason the lawsuit failed is because the court looked at the fairness of the transaction and determined that Tesla paid a fair price.

shareholder value maximization, shareholder value maximization über alles

I just wanna know where we can find these shareholders and evict them from earth because they're destroying everything.

This is true but it's not as far off as you think. In this case, the court doesn't have to just find it was a fair price, but a fair process as well.

That is, the standard the defendants have to meet (not the plaintiffs, the burden is actually on tesla here despite having been sued) is that the transaction was entirely fair to the corporation and shareholders- the process was a fair one, the price was a fair one, etc.

I have trouble thinking of a case where you can prove all this[1] but the market would have come up with something different. Almost by definition, if the market would have decided to pay a lower price, either the price or the process was probably not fair.

[1] Which again, you have to do affirmatively. You aren't just rebutting plaintiff evidence, the burden is on you to show the fairness

Even if there was a market, any market naturally requires adversarial decision making in the negotiation of a deal to have economic calculation (what we generally view the benefit we derive from a market in the first place).

When the same people are making the ask as making the buy, you literally cannot decouple the decision-making in a way that objectively eliminates cooperation.

A market cannot exist when the entities involved abandon adversarial decision-making and cooperate. One's priority is always suborned by one or the other.

And what happened to Tesla solar roofs? Haven’t heard about those since like 2020. Who actually has one? And Tesla trucks? And full self-driving? And robotaxis? And the private venture around the moon?

It’s like everyone just forgets Musk’s announcements that never get delivered on.

Exactly why do you believe a court that does exactly this kind of judgement all the time is not capable of it?

They issued a 127 page supporting decision on why they found it was a fair process that generated a fair price.

Want to say which part you take issue with that shows it was not capable of the judgement?

FWIW - I actually hate tesla, i just also hate the sort of drive by shitting on other fields that HN seems to do sometimes. If there are concrete reasons to believe they aren't capable, let's have that discussion. Otherwise, there's no need to denigrate others capabilities without evidence based on our feelings :)

Scandalous ?

They are, but in the relevant Delaware law the latter point matters when there is a potential conflict of interest, so the Delaware court ruled on that.

Is that what a corporate lawyer would say?

Any entity that can afford to invest billions of dollars can probably also afford to litigate if they see fit.

They’ve been here for ages but you can basically see what happens when you self-identify with a party rather than principles and put your intellect to work rationalizing positions selected by other people. I miss their contributions of a decade ago.

Found Elon's sock

Pointing out disinformation is a valuable thing to do, and well in the spirit of hacker news.

[flagged]

Wow that’s incredible, is it some kind of bot or would a human do that for some reason?

An acquisition is a special case (for the company being acquired) and the scrutiny is somewhat higher.

At least in Delaware. I have no idea what corporate law is like in Texas.

Given how much they're typically paid for their trouble, you'd think they'd carry an ounce of responsibility for their actions.

You mean the regulators threatened by DOGE?

As best I can tell the deal includes paying off $12 billion of Twitter debt. So that's real money, though that seems like it's basically all of the cash that xAI has raised, so if that's the case that's pretty wild.

Edit: I misread, Musk said it's an all-stock deal, so you're right, it's all funny money. I think that means the combined entity is taking on that debt. It's still great for Twitter and bad for xAI investors because the combined entity now has both the $12 billion debt and all the VC xAI raised.

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 lacking revenue but also have no distribution channel comparable to the scale of Twitter/X.

xAI has one of the leading models in terms of investment and user base, and it’s rapidly improving on its evaluation metrics.

Twitter/X is one of the Top 10, if not Top 5, social media properties worldwide. It has hundreds of millions of monthly active users and maintains the lead in public consciousness as the “go to” place for 1-N broadcasting of information. While Bluesky shows promise, it won’t be dethroning Twitter any time soon. When has Bluesky been the source of breaking news?

And you cannot separate these two businesses. Twitter/X and X.ai are fundamentally coupled to one another. Twitter is not only a data source for X.ai but also a distribution and retention channel. There is an “ask Grok” button under every Tweet. And it’s not the only LLM that can be summoned via Tweet – with similar automations from companies like Perplexity proving there is value in the channel – but it is the only LLM with a native integration into the interface and first dibs on freshly-generated user content and breaking news.

I’m guessing Tesla is paying xAI to train their FSD model?

> diminishing user base

Where are you getting this from? All numbers I see indicate the user base has been growing globally. https://backlinko.com/twitter-users

Fair enough, edited to just revenue. But those are just datacenters bought with VC money - my intent was to say that xAI's resources are basically just the investment they've received.

Huh, DOGE ought to look into where that 700M went..

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

Exactly. So then why draw conclusions about how SolarCity was a bad deal for shareholders (see parent comments)?

There's no substantiation of that either way.

How many solar city customers have added powerwall/megapack...?

Even if its low for solar, it doesn't mean it was a bad deal. He acquired existing customers he could sell other products to.

The vertically integrated Tesla strategy is to use batteries to arbitrage the value of stored energy. This is well described in the Tesla "Master Plan" documents. Solar is a huge part of this.

According to the company filings the solar assets Tesla acquired are still generating revenue at the rates projected during the acquisition.

This is why many states base the sales tax of used cars sales on the market value, not the actual sales price.

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

Yes, and just like anti-trust law doesn’t make monopolies illegal, it’s not the self-dealing that’s illegal, it’s the abuse of the process (as you say).

I mean, that was always a grift to anyone with two brain cells to rub together .

Yeah it is more profitable but revenues are way down.

In 2021, the last full year before Musk's acquisition, Twitter generated $5.08 billion in revenue.

Under Musk's ownership, X's revenue has declined significantly. In 2024, X reported $2.7 billion in revenue, which is nearly half of its pre-acquisition level. For 2025, global ad revenue is projected to grow to $2.26 billion, marking its first annual increase since the acquisition.

So yes on paper, X is more profitable than Twitter was before the acquisition. Its 2024 adjusted EBITDA nearly doubled Twitter’s best year, despite a much smaller revenue base. But whether that profitability is sustainable or comes at too high a cost—strategically, reputationally, and culturally—remains an open question.

changes nothing

Presumably that involved actual money unlike this deal?

precisely

You must not have tried FSD 13.x with AI4 hardware. I commute to work every day from the suburbs to the city with a ~25 min one-way commute with zero disengagements.

Edit: Elon mentioned in the last earnings call that if you are on AI3 hardware and bought FSD that they will have to upgrade you free of charge to AI4.

Edit 2: To clarify, FSD 13.x is only available with AI4 hardware.

Even if he made the Twitter investors whole, I wonder how the investors in xAI feel.

Isn't Twitter's stock price higher than it was at acquisition?

When you Godwin your own thread, you are by definition done.

Speaking of threads with zero facts, can you cite your research? Here’s mine showing $12.5B secured by TSLA shares:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001418091/000110465...

That wasn’t the only funding, of course, but it’s a big chunk:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220422035052/https://www.bloom...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/25/technology/musk-twitter-s...

How did he get the tens of billions in cash he personally put in if not leveraging Tesla. Yes he had minority investors and put some debt on the acquisition itself, but he put up a lot of money.

You haven’t added any facts either, it’s just one more statement from a random Interneter like those Reddit posts. I’m intrigued to hear some fact on this point though?

This only matters if people care enough to act appropriately when that is broken.

The Constitution isn't worth much right now, and it's up for sale, no less.

I really wish for this theory to be tested TBH. Martial law in US would be a great thing. US economy tanks, rest of the world like Europe is forced to pick up the slack, the world gets a refresh on what conservative "small government" brainrot does to countries.

Let's be realistic: Congress has given away its power for decades. It is nowadays a Congress permanently divided and pretty much non-functional.

The commenter also included past presidents, which is silly. Once a president is a past president, he no longer controls that military apparatus.

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.

When there's no alternative nexus of power to rally around, they'll have no choice but to do whatever illegal thing they are told.

Yeah. He’s not even the richest African emmigrant… because Mansa Musa tipped so heavily he broke intercontinental trade dynamics.

Re: 2026, it's possible Democrats could take back the House, and then be able to impeach the President. But it looks like they would need to win 32 of the 33 seats up for grabs in the Senate - 20 of which are currently held by Republicans in solidly red states - to guarantee the 66 votes necessary to convict. That seems unlikely.

And think about what would need to happen if you'd like to see actual change in leadership of the executive branch. You'd need the House comfortably controlled by Democrats, with the Senate controlled by a supermajority of Democrats. I think that you'd need both the President and Vice President impeached, convicted, and removed from office, while preventing the current/acting President from having a new VP nominated and confirmed, so that the Speaker of the House became acting President. This seems even less likely.

The elections are already being taken over .. in newspeak of course.

PRESERVING AND PROTECTING THE INTEGRITY OF AMERICAN ELECTIONS

~ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/pres...

  The sweeping 12-page order contains a number of provisions, including a documentary proof of citizenship requirement to vote in federal elections as well as a requirement that all ballots be received by Election Day – both of which fall outside of the executive branch’s authority to mandate. 

  But, there’s also a section, buried deeper in the order, that, if implemented, would give Trump’s Justice Department the authority to pick and choose what states get federal funding for election administration. It would require states to loop the DOJ in on supposed violations of election law that it encounters. But it also mandates that basic information about voter roll maintenance be shared with the DOJ as well.   

  If states are unwilling to enter into what is referred to as an “information-sharing agreement” with the Attorney General regarding “suspected violations of state and federal elections laws,” the Attorney General is allowed to withhold grants and other funds from those states, the executive order says.

There are several commentaries at length going into the hidden traps and pitfalls of this latest executive order kicking about, so far it looks loaded.

On what basis do you think 2028 elections will be free and fair? Congress is going to try to mass-disenfranchise women before the 2026 midterms. They've stated this on the record. Dems aren't going to gain control of congress in the upcoming special elections. We're totally fucked economically and otherwise unless Democrats in congress -- mainly the Senate -- can get a fucking grip, pay attention to what's happening, and be the opposition party we need.

> Optimistically speaking it could happen as soon as after Nov of 2026 (midterms).

The midterms could have some meaningful effect a lot sooner than that if we start seeing across-the-board primary challenges of pro-Trump Republicans. Of course, all of this is assuming that the broad Republican constituency have to some extent gone anti-Trump, and I really don't know how much basis there is for that assumption.

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 people aren't going to suffer that much, which means the pattern of Dems inheriting a shit economy, everything getting blamed on them again like with Biden, and then a smarter Republican comes along and its a repeat again in 2032.

If you don't believe he'll find a way to get a third term like every other dictator, you're living in a fantasy.

>> He literally commands the most powerful military apparatus the world has ever seen.

> That’s also disputable

Why? Which military has ever existed that would have a chance against the current US military?

Elon was uniquely rich is US history but his wealthy fluctuates wildly:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rockefeller-rich-elon-musks-w...

> unless and until they have a falling-out. I'd be surprised if that's any less than 6 months away, or more than 3 years away.

That's the other thing: Trump's tastes and whims are super fickle. Trump and Musk have already clashed on a bunch of things, and there's no reason to believe that won't continue and/or get worse. And Trump's priorities could change, without a corresponding shift in Musk's.

Or, an (over)simplified way to put it:

"All money is made up, but some are more made up than others."

Theoretically the synergy with Twitter could be fantastic in terms of potential value added, if I’m trying to be down to earth. The others have no real foothold in the real world beyond their own services, and users may flock away as AI integrated into their favorite apps etc. become good enough.

What are OpenAI, anthropic, going to do that xAI isn’t? By that logic if there is more than one company in any field they’re all worthless.

That's true, and in the last two months it's done worse than all of those put together!

I’m not an expert in this but as far as I can tell there will never be a margin call. There’s only a margin call if he defaulted on his loans. All the banks will do is ask to restructure the loan to compensate for the loss in the collateral.

Further, it’s just $6bn which musk can easily cover.

> The funding included $7 billion of senior secured bank loans; $6 billion in subordinated debt; $6.25 billion in bank loans to Musk personally, secured by $62.5 billion of his Tesla stock; $20 billion in cash equity from Musk, to be provided by sales of Tesla stock and other assets; and $7.1 billion in equity from 19 independent investors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_Twitter_by_Elon...

What happens if you collateral a stock for loan and the stock somehow becomes worthless?

his margin call level is not public right?

Elon sold 19B in stock, took a loan for 6.25B, and the rest was other investors.

The 6.25B loan, assuming he still has it, is really not an issue considering his net worth. He can add more collateral or sell a bit. In fact TSLA stock is higher now than when he bought Twitter.

No source, just speculation. I think my main point is that these aren’t regular people that we need to feel sorry for or rise up in arms to defend.

So your justification rests on the theories that a) Musk (Twitter) was denying Twitter data access to Musk (xAI), and b) Twitter data - a firehose of ill-informed flamewars and bot responses - would provide some incremental benefit to training a frontier model.

IANAL stands for "I am not a lawyer"

This reminded me of this one time my father used the term "annales" which in french apparently means "past exams" or something :P

Sorry to disappoint you, but it means "I am not a lawyer"

And dropping. No one can tell the future; it might recover before it hits margin-call territory, and it might not.

The company is imploding. BYD is eating their lunch on most real metrics except their absurd valuation.

Maybe he knows something.

Heck, TSLA today is higher than on 5 November 2024, less than five months ago!

Sure, but it's becoming increasingly obvious to everyone that the American car industry is in major trouble. In a decade, I'm confident in saying a lot of American car companies will not exist.

We see it in our day-to-day lives. People aren't buying new cars. Cars on the road are getting older and older. Views of Tesla continue to dwindle. Anything Stellantis is on life support. I mean, Chrysler has literally one car. GM is clawing for any sort of relevancy. And Ford is only afloat because of toxic masculinity. We all know that it's bad in the US, and we know outside of the US it's 100x times worse for these companies. We also know the US car market as a market is getting overshadowed.

It doesn't matter what stupid investors think. We can see the writing on the wall. These investors are delusional, period.

It is not unreasonable to assume Tesla shares will continue to decline whilst:

a) sales internationally are plummeting at such a rapid pace

b) consumer confidence is down with predictions of a looming recession

c) the brand continues to be tarnished by the association with Musk and Trump

d) auto tariffs will increase the costs of parts and the likelihood of reciprocity

67% of Americans would not consider buying a Tesla, new poll says - https://electrek.co/2025/03/28/most-americans-would-not-cons... - March 28th, 2025

Tesla (TSLA) Q1 delivery consensus: 377,000 EVs – worst performance in 2 years - https://electrek.co/2025/03/28/tesla-tsla-q1-delivery-consen... - March 28th, 2025

Tesla is banned from Canada EV rebate program, gov freezes suspicous $43 million in rebates - https://electrek.co/2025/03/25/tesla-banned-canada-ev-rebate... - March 25, 2025

Tesla sales fall by 49% in Europe even as the electric vehicle market grows - https://apnews.com/article/tesla-sales-recall-trump-byd-b6f5... - March 25, 2025

Tesla’s fall from grace may have no equal, says JPMorgan: ‘We struggle to think of anything analogous’ [$120 price target] - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-fall-grace-may-no-18005... - March 13, 2025

Tesla’s stock nosedives — wiping out $700B in gains since Trump’s election victory - https://nypost.com/2025/03/07/business/tesla-stock-drop-eras... - March 7, 2025

Australian Tesla sales plummet as owners rush to distance themselves from Elon Musk - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/06/australia... - March 6th, 2025

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/ (1YR)

Facts you don't like aren't "weasel words."

“Continues to decline” is a cushion for the next sentence “downgrade to sell” which cushions you from the ultimate, “new marketing leadership with Barron Trump and someone named Alien Brainrot”.

[dead]

If I jump off a building and you see me at the 10th floor, I was also 29.4 meters higher 3 seconds ago.

Tesla sales are falling worldwide and losing market share

"He's a terrible human, but look at the model benchmarks!" We're different people I suppose.

> What he's pulled off with xAI more recently is really quite incredible.

I genuinely have no idea what he's done that's incredible. I don't even know what xAI does apart from being a chatbot inside of twitter.

I think you are mixing up Grok with DeepSeek. Grok managed to make a mediocre model using way more resources. xAI has nothing.

> What he's pulled off with xAI more recently is really quite incredible.

What?

> I recall before I bailed from X/Twitter they already added an AI training consent toggle, which silently defaulted to "I consent" for all existing users of course.

There's a solution for that: build a Twitter bot that posts strange things.

Oh yes, you can definitely be reassured that Elon and his openai dropouts working at xAI will follow that one to the tee.

It doesn't actually looks like another financial shifting chairs on the deck due to the xAI valuation being extremely high.

A stock ponzi scheme to keep him afloat? Soon he will start a new venture and use that venture to save the previous venture and so on. Maybe a robot clothing company because robots shouldn't be naked.

The debt goes to the merged company and so can be serviced or retired using the funds of the whole company.

Who also talks like Sam Altman that the human race will need to all be on welfare (Universal Basic Income) because of AI.

I don't understand it all ...cut people's jobs who make multitudes of billions less (cut 25k probationary employees like ripping off a band-aid), want people to work like the Chinese do (day and night) so we are the leader in AI (?) and after AI starts replacing jobs we all need to be on a welfare system. Isn't a welfare system the biggest waste to the Republican party (independent here)?

Does he even know his end game with all this or he's just having fun be the most powerful person?

I forgot all about the solar roof thing.

In concept seems like a really interesting idea. I guess it never ended up working out.

> Twitter was making around $500 billion a quarter before the Apple ad targeting changes

From https://archive.is/rfBcg:

> Advertising revenue was $1.14 billion during the quarter ended Sept. 30 [2021], in line with consensus estimates.

> Twitter was making around $500 billion a quarter

Huh?

[flagged]

Looks like Musk's dogs are out in force and had the thread flagged ...

Yes, but what's the link between those 2 news ?

They are most probably related, but I don't see how.

To be fair they said one of the strongest models.

We're at the point now where any heavily monetized player can build one of the strongest models. I mean, especially with all of the incredibly open Chinese companies releasing cutting edge research now that most American firms have gone quiet or only releasing their tailings.

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.