In a recent Twitter post Elon Musk announced that “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).” Musk had bought Twitter/X for $44 billion in 2022. Therefore, for all practical purposes, there is a clear loss of over $11 billion ($12 billion debt notwithstanding). What exactly happened? Did the world’s richest man make a losing deal or is he using one company to bail out another.
@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…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 28, 2025 Analysis of X valuations
A recent report by Benzinga highlighted the recovery in X valuation after a sharp drop. In fact the Benzinga report quoted Fidelity marking the value down by as much as 72% as of December, 2024. As per reports, the valuation bounced back to $44 billion after having reportedly dropped to a low of $12 billion since Musk’s takeover in 2022. This valuation is as per Financial Times after a “secondary deal was carried out earlier this month.”
ALSO READElon Musk sells X social media platform to his artificial intelligence startup xAI for $33 billion
$44 billion is almost the same amount that Musk paid for buying Twitter 3 years ago. Interestingly, this report comes close on the heels of another report by Bloomberg that indicated that Musk had put in an additional $150 million in X last year. This is through a share buy at the rate similar to the valuations in 2022.
What’s fuelling X recovery?
One of the first blows that X received after the takeover by Musk in 2022 was advertisers abandoning the popular social media platform. However, that might now be a thing of the past. Apple, Disney and many similar advertisers are again resuming partnership with X.
The cost cutting measures since Musk took over also helped spruce up the balance sheet. The Financial Times report highlighted that the EBITDA(earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization) for X last year was at $1.2 billion.
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