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Musk says xAI has acquired X in $33 billion stock deal

The acquisition comes two and a half years after Musk first acquired X, formerly known as Twitter.

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Credit: Elon Musk | X

Elon Musk announced this week that xAI has acquired his social media platform X, performed through an all-stock transaction expected to make it easier to raise additional funding for the combined entities.

In a post on X on Friday, Musk said that xAI acquired X in an all-stock transaction, with xAI valued at $80 billion and X at $33 billion, considering a $45 billion value less $12 billion in debt for the social media company. He adds that combining the companies “will deliver smarter, more meaningful experiences,” along with offering a “platform that doesn’t just reflect the world but actively accelerates human progress.”

A report from the Wall Street Journal said that shares of X and xAI would be exchanged for shares in a holding company dubbed the xAI Holdings Corp., while the report also claimed that executives at both firms believed merging would make it easier to raise funding.

You can read Musk’s full statement on the acquisition below.

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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).

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 unprecedented speed and scale.

X is the digital town square where more than 600M active users go to find the real-time source of ground truth and, in the last two years, has been transformed into one of the most efficient companies in the world, positioning it to deliver scalable future growth.

xAI and X’s futures 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. 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. This will allow us to build a platform that doesn’t just reflect the world but actively accelerates human progress.

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I would like to recognize the hardcore dedication of everyone at xAI and X that has brought us to this point. This is just the beginning.

Thank you for your continued partnership and support.

READ MORE ON XAI: Elon Musk’s xAI gets investment from Nvidia in recent funding round: report

Musk officially purchased X, then called Twitter, and took it private for $44 billion in October 2022. The Tesla CEO then launched xAI in 2023, along with debuting the company’s first product, Grok, first as a large language AI model that was only available on X. The model has since been developed more and has added image generation, and the company last month debuted the latest-gen Grok 3 update.

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Last month, it was also reported that xAI’s upcoming $700 million data center in Atlanta would be operated collaboratively with X, which is expected to eventually utilize over 12,000 Nvidia GPUs. The AI firm also activated an even larger data center in Memphis, Tennessee last year, dubbed Colossus, and expected to sport 200,000 Nvidia GPUs upon completion.

Elon Musk says xAI will develop an AI game studio

Zach is a renewable energy reporter who has been covering electric vehicles since 2020. He grew up in Fremont, California, and he currently lives in Colorado. His work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, KRON4 San Francisco, FOX31 Denver, InsideEVs, CleanTechnica, and many other publications. When he isn't covering Tesla or other EV companies, you can find him writing and performing music, drinking a good cup of coffee, or hanging out with his cats, Banks and Freddie. Reach out at zach@teslarati.com, find him on X at @zacharyvisconti, or send us tips at tips@teslarati.com.

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Elon Musk

SpaceX is quietly becoming the U.S. Military’s only reliable rocket

Space Force drops ULA for SpaceX on GPS launch after Vulcan rocket anomaly investigation halts flights.

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The U.S. Space Force announced today it is switching an upcoming GPS III satellite launch from United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket to a SpaceX Falcon 9, a move that is as much a reflection of Vulcan’s mounting problems as it is a validation of SpaceX’s growing dominance in national security space launch. The GPS III Space Vehicle 09, originally contracted to fly on Vulcan this month, will now target a late April liftoff on Falcon 9, marking the fourth consecutive GPS III satellite the Space Force has moved to SpaceX after contracts were originally awarded to ULA.

The immediate trigger is a solid rocket motor anomaly that occurred on February 12 during Vulcan’s USSF-87 mission. Although the payloads reached orbit and ULA declared the mission successful, the company characterized the malfunction as a “significant performance anomaly” and has since paused all military launches on Vulcan pending a root cause investigation.

“With this change, we are answering the call for rapid delivery of advanced GPS capability while the Vulcan anomaly investigation continues,” said Systems Delta 81 Commander Col. Ryan Hiserote. “We are once again demonstrating our team’s flexibility and are fully committed to leverage all options available for responsive and reliable launch for the Nation.”

The broader reality is that SpaceX’s reliability record and launch cadence have made it the path of least resistance for the Pentagon, and bodes well with Elon Musk’s plans to IPO SpaceX sometime this year. Its Falcon 9 is the most flight-proven rocket in history, and the Space Force’s Rapid Response Trailblazer program was specifically designed to enable exactly this kind of provider swap for GPS missions, and effectively building SpaceX’s flexibility into the national security launch architecture by design.

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SpaceX IPO is coming, CEO Elon Musk confirms

For ULA, the stakes are existential. The company entered 2026 with aspirations of finally turning a corner after years of Vulcan delays, with interim CEO John Elbon pointing to a backlog of over 80 missions as reason for optimism. Meanwhile, SpaceX’s contracts with the Space Force have given it a formal pathway to take on even more national security launches going forward.

The significance of today’s announcement extends beyond one satellite swap. It reinforces that America’s most critical space infrastructure, including GPS, missile warning, and beyond, is increasingly dependent on a single commercial provider.

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Tesla’s $2.9 billion bet: Why Elon Musk is turning to China to build America’s solar future

Tesla looks to bring solar manufacturing to the US, with latest $2.9 billion bet to acquire Chinese solar equipment.

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Tesla is reportedly in talks to purchase $2.9 billion worth of solar manufacturing equipment from a group of Chinese suppliers, including Suzhou Maxwell Technologies, which is the world’s largest producer of screen-printing equipment used in solar cell production. According to Reuters sources, the equipment is expected to be delivered before autumn and shipped to Texas, where Tesla plans to anchor its next phase of domestic solar production.

The move is a direct extension of a vision Elon Musk has been building for months. At the World Economic Forum in Davos this past January, Musk announced that both Tesla and SpaceX were independently working to establish 100 gigawatts of annual solar manufacturing capacity inside the United States. Days later, on Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings call, he made the ambition concrete: “We’re going to work toward getting 100 GW a year of solar cell production, integrating across the entire supply chain from raw materials all the way to finished solar panels.”

Job postings on Tesla’s website reflect that same target, with language explicitly calling for 100 GW of “solar manufacturing from raw materials on American soil before the end of 2028.”

Tesla job description for Staff Manufacturing Development Engineer, Solar Manufacturing

Tesla job listing for Staff Manufacturing Development Engineer, Solar Manufacturing

The urgency behind the latest solar manufacturing target is rooted in a set of rapidly emerging pressures related to AI and Tesla’s own energy business. U.S. power consumption hit its second consecutive record high in 2025 and is projected to climb further through 2026 and 2027, driven largely by the explosion in AI data centers and the broader electrification of transportation. Tesla’s own energy division, which produces the Megapack utility-scale battery storage system, has been growing rapidly, and solar supply is a critical companion component for the business to scale. Musk has argued that solar is not just a clean energy option but the only one that makes economic sense at the scale AI infrastructure demands.

Tesla lands in Texas for latest Megapack production facility

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Ironically, the path to domestic solar independence currently runs through China. Sort of.

Despite Tesla’s stated push to localize its supply chain, mirrored recently by the company’s plan for a $4.3 billion LFP battery manufacturing partnership with LG Energy Solution in Michigan, Tesla still relies on China-based suppliers to keep its cost structure intact.

The $2.9 billion equipment deal underscores a tension Musk himself acknowledged at Davos: “Unfortunately, in the U.S. the tariff barriers for solar are extremely high and that makes the economics of deploying solar artificially high, because China makes almost all the solar.” Building the factory in America requires buying the machinery from the country Tesla is trying to reduce its dependence on.

Tesla named by U.S. Gov. in $4.3B battery deal for American-made cells

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The regulatory pathway adds another layer of complexity. Suzhou Maxwell has been seeking export approval from China’s commerce ministry, and it remains unclear how quickly that clearance will come. Still, the market has already reacted, with shares in the Chinese firms reportedly involved in the talks surged more than 7% following the Reuters report that broke the story.

Whether Tesla can hit its 2028 target of 100GW of solar manufacturing remains an open question. Though that scale may seem staggering, especially in such a short timeframe, we know that Musk has a documented history of “always pulling it off” in the face of ambitious deadlines that may slip. But, rest assured – it’ll get done.

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Elon Musk reveals date of Tesla Full Self-Driving’s next massive release

Initially planned for a January or February release, v14.3 aims to add some reasoning and logic to the decisions that Full Self-Driving makes, which could improve a lot of things, including Navigation, which is a major complaint of many owners currently.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed the date of Full Self-Driving’s next massive release: v14.3.

For months, Tesla owners with Hardware 4 have been utilizing Full Self-Driving v14.2 and subsequent releases. Currently, the most up-to-date FSD version is v14.2.2.5, which has definitely brought out mixed reviews. With releases, some things get better, and other things might regress slightly.

For the most part, things are better in terms of overall behavior.

However, many owners have been looking forward to the next release, which is v14.3, about which Musk has said many great things. Back in November, Musk said that v14.3 “is where the last big piece of the puzzle lands.”

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He added:

“We’re gonna add a lot of reasoning and RL (reinforcement learning). To get to serious scale, Tesla will probably need to build a giant chip fab. To have a few hundred gigawatts of AI chips per year, I don’t see that capability coming online fast enough, so we will probably have to build a fab.”

Initially planned for a January or February release, v14.3 aims to add some reasoning and logic to the decisions that Full Self-Driving makes, which could improve a lot of things, including Navigation, which is a major complaint of many owners currently.

Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.2 is a considerable improvement from early versions of the suite, but we have written about the somewhat confusing updates that have come with recent versions.

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Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.2.2.5 might be the most confusing release ever

They’ve been incredibly difficult to gauge in terms of progress because some things have gotten better, but there seems to be some real regression on a handful of things, especially with confidence and assertiveness.

Musk confirmed today on X that Tesla is already testing v14.3 internally right now. It will hit a wide release “in a few weeks,” so we should probably expect it by late April.

Overall, there are high hopes that v14.3 could be a true game changer for Tesla Full Self-Driving, as many believe it could be the version that Robotaxis in Austin, Texas, some of which are driverless and unsupervised, are running.

It could also include some major additions, including “Banish,” also referred to as “Reverse Summon,” which would go find a parking spot after dropping occupants off at their destination.

What Tesla will roll out, and when exactly it arrives, all remain to be seen, but fans have been ready for a new version as v14.2.2.5 has definitely run its course. We have had a lot of readers tell us their biggest request is to fix Navigation errors, which seem to be one of the most universal complaints among daily FSD users.

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