Elon Musk Accused of "Money Laundering" After Selling X

Elon Musk Claims He Sold X To xAI, The Artificial Intelligence He Founded, X Asks How Is This Not “Money Laundering?”

Source: Anna Barclay / Getty / Elon Musk / X

Elon Musk’s time as owner of X, formerly Twitter, is reportedly over, but before you celebrate, it sounds like his slimy tentacles will still be all over the platform. Spotted on the New York Times, Elon Musk claims he sold X to xAI, the artificial intelligence startup the Tesla chief founded in 2023. Yes, if you’re wondering if there are potential conflicts of interest, you’re not far off in your thinking. According to the website, it’s an all-stock deal, with xAI valued at $80 billion and the mess that is X worth $30 billion. This is $14 billion cheaper than when Phony Stark reluctantly acquired the platform, then called Twitter, for $44 billion in 2022.

“XAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk wrote in his post on X. “The combined company will deliver smarter, more meaningful experiences to billions of people while staying true to our core mission of seeking truth and advancing knowledge.”

Both companies share resources. xAI’s intelligence models are trained based on the data it gathers from posts from X users. The companies also share engineers and the chatbot Grok.

Social Media Thinks Elon Musk Is Money Laundering

Social media has been very skeptical of this proposed deal. “He sold Twitter/X to himself. This is clearly money laundering in 4K,” one user wrote on X. Another post read, “how do you sell your own company to your own company.” “We can tell he’s bored because how do you sell your shit to yourself??” said another post. Yeah, this deal is sketchy. We shall see how it continues to play out. Until then, you can see more reactions in the gallery below.