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Notes -
xAI acquires X…
in an all stock transaction valuing xAI at 80 billion. This isn’t the first time Musk has bailed out one of his companies with another (Solar City -> Tesla) in 2016. That decision was upheld by Delaware courts and it’s hard to imagine this won’t end up in the (Nevada) courts again. Given xAI has raised at least 12 billion and put in an offer for OpenAI at 97, the valuation isn’t ridiculous on its face. It’s also hard to imagine this will do anything to buoy his rapidly declining public image.
So, what’s the play for the new XxAI? Presumably, xAI was already training on twitter data. Terrifying! Is this anything more than a self bailout to avoid margin calls on Tesla stock that leveraged the purchase of Twitter?
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1905731750275510312
Self bailout may not be exactly accurate, but I think it's mostly about refinancing the X debt.
The other issue is that xAI is a benefit corp. I'm not an expert in legalities, but this probably allows him to bake in a requirement to promote free speech into X.
If he becomes more arms length or sells off enough stock to loose control he could probably still sue the board if they start bringing in "misinformation policies" or banning politicians and political activists from one side.
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The problem with the “everything app” is they only became popular in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, to SOME extent WhatsApp in India etc as an “OS within an OS” for the many wacky versions of Android (and now Harmony etc) that make up the majority of local smartphones, many of which had multiple stores tied to the OS (like the Play store), the device manufacturer (Samsung or Huawei etc) and the mobile network operator.
When these apps became popular they built off of one successful service (chat, ride hailing, food delivery) to become mini operating systems of their own. Instead of dealing with shitty customized Android you just use the super app that has the same experience for everyone.
In America, where iOS is by far the dominant system, and where 80%+ of the most valuable users (younger users, middle class and above users, people with any money to spend and the propensity to spend it on mobile) use iPhone, iPhone is the super app. iOS essentially offers an integrated experience just like WeChat, with payments (Apple Pay), messages (iMessage), music/movies/games/health, an App Store and one-button registration for third party services through iCloud for ride sharing and food delivery; tapping the ‘Uber Eats’ app is essentially no more difficult than tapping the food delivery tab within Grab.
As for this deal, it’s just a way of persuading XAi employees that their long hours at mediocre pay are actually making them rich because of this new paper valuation.
The "some" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. The overwhelming majority of users use it for its original purpose, namely messaging other people. It has payment features like a tie-in with the UPI payment protocol, but I know nobody who uses it and I've never seen it being used in the wild. The only other notable use case is that companies like to
spamadvertise there and often have some kind of automated customer support available.It's no more of an everything app than Venmo is a messaging platform because you can theoretically communicate with other people using it.
It is a messaging app but the customer service example is telling because it’s used a lot more broadly for commercial things than any chat app is in the west.
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Tbh the Everything app is pretty bog standard by now, see Facebook. I was recently surprised just how much nonsense is crammed into facebook. And it would have been even weirder if they did go ahead and shoved AI chat into it like zuck wanted.
Facebook has so much garbage in it it’s incredible. To many idle hands over there.
Idk how granny actually makes sense of the app
The ones I know that are still sane just use it to talk to the grandkids and schedule their book clubs, mostly.
I've been to martial arts gyms for which the only way to see updates, announcements and schedules is to go to their Facebook page.
Forget martial art gyms, our power company does that. Bubblegum Crisis was right: Boomers are a menace.
What would you prefer? That updates and announcements are given only in a Whatsapp group chat?
That's the alternative I see millennials going for.
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Elon never really meant for xAI to be separate from Xitter. It was meant to just be part of the coming-soon "everything app" experience in Xitter. xAI was likely incorporated as a standalone thing because it would have been much easier to raise billions with an entirely new AI lab that would go up against the likes of OpenAI.
Not sure why it's being consolidated now, it could just be housecleaning or he could want xAI money injected into xitter.
There may be data in Xitter that legally can't be shared with xAI as a third party due to privacy law. If they are merged then I'm guessing everything Xitter has is fair game.
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Your theory doesn’t make sense. This was an all stock deal. It shouldn’t give liquidity to Musk.
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