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Elon Musk’s xAI acquires X in $33 billion deal
Welcome back everyone! Here’s what you need to know about AI today:
👉 Elon Musk sold X to his own AI company, xAI
👉 A new book reveals the details of Sam Altman’s dramatic exit from OpenAI
👉 Gemini 2.5 Pro is now free for every Gemini user
and many more!
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Read time: 4.9 minutes
ELON MUSK
Elon Musk’s xAI acquires X in $33 billion deal
Source: Deadline
What’s going on: Elon Musk announced that his AI startup, xAI, has acquired his social media platform, X, in an all-stock transaction. The deal values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion, with the latter figure reflecting a $45 billion enterprise value minus $12 billion in debt. This move merges two of Musk’s high-profile ventures, combining xAI’s AI capabilities with X’s vast user base and data resources.
What does it mean: The acquisition follows a period of fluctuating valuations for X, which dropped as low as $10 billion. For xAI, the deal strengthens its competitive edge in the AI race against rivals like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic leveraging X’s real-time data from over 600 million users to train models like Grok 3.
More details:
Musk, who bought X (then Twitter) for $44 billion in 2022, stated that the acquisition aligns the companies’ futures, aiming to enhance AI development and user experience through integrated data, models, and talent.
One of the major advantages that xAI has over OpenAI and other startups is its access to X. The large body of posts that X has accumulated over the years gives xAI a significant advantage in AI training.
If you have not already tried Grok 3, xAI latest and most intelligent model, it is now the time! Converse with it on Grok’s website.
OPENAI
New book unveils Sam Altman’s dramatic exit from OpenAI
Source: Axios
What’s going on: An excerpt from an upcoming book, “The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future” offers new details on the brief firing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman back in 2023. The excerpt reveals that the nonprofit board of OpenAI grew wary of Altman’s leadership after uncovering issues like his personal ownership of the OpenAI Startup Fund, which raised ethical and transparency concerns. At the same time, co-founder Ilya Sutskever and CTO Mira Murati were documenting what they saw as Altman’s toxic and deceptive behavior, including Slack screenshots showing discrepancies, such as Altman’s claim that the legal team had waived a safety review for GPT-4 Turbo. This evidence prompted the board to remove Altman and install Murati as interim CEO.
What does it mean: There was a tension, but the decision quickly unraveled. OpenAI employees rallied against the board, signing a letter demanding Altman’s reinstatement. He returned to his role shortly after, but the fallout saw Sutskever and Murati exit to start their own ventures.
More details:
For a firm valued at $80 billion by late 2023, the drama highlights tensions between its nonprofit roots and Altman’s profit-driven approach.
The book is written by Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey, and claims the nonprofit’s board members became increasingly concerned after learning about issues such as an OpenAI Startup Fund that was actually personally owned by Altman.
Interested in learning more and reading the author’s other works? Check out Keach’s personal website.
🆓 Google announced on a recent post on X that Gemini 2.5 Pro experimental is now officially available to all Gemini users for free.
🍎 Apple is overhauling its Health app to include an AI-powered coaching feature, aiming to provide personalized health guidance.
💊 Isomorphic Labs, a Google-backed AI drug discovery startup, raised $600 million in its first external funding round to advance its AI-driven pharmaceutical research built on the Nobel Prize-winning AlphaFold technology.
🚀 Chinese AI startup Zhipu AI launched a free AI agent called AutoGLM Rumination, capable of tasks like deep research and travel planning.
🏭 Siemens has developed an AI foundation model called Industrial Copilot, which aims to enhance industrial automation and digitalization by providing a versatile, enterprise-grade AI solution capable of processing diverse data types and adapting to various industrial use cases.
AI + SQL
Design a SQL query to find the top 5 customers by total spending from a table with columns: customer_id, order_date, and order_amount. Include sample data and expected output.
GPT-4o-mini’s answer
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