Elon Musk said on Friday that his startup xAI has merged with X, his social network, in an all-stock transaction that values the artificial intelligence company at $80 billion and the social media company at $33 billion.
“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined,” Musk, the world’s richest person, wrote in a post on X. “Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent.”
He added that the merger would, “unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.” The purchase price, he said, was $45 billion less $12 billion in debt.
Because both companies are privately held and controlled by Musk, the transaction likely amounts to a stock swap, with X investors getting paid out in xAI shares. The companies have a number of mutual investors, including venture firms Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, as well as Fidelity Management, Vy Capital and Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Co.
Musk, who’s also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, acquired Twitter in a deal valued at around $44 billion in late 2022, implementing massive cost cuts and soon renaming it X. Linda Yaccarino, who Musk hired as CEO of X, wrote in a post after Friday’s announcement, “The future could not be brighter.”
Musk launched xAI less than two years ago with a stated goal to “understand the true nature of the universe.” The startup has been trying to compete directly with OpenAI, the richly valued AI startup that Musk co-founded in 2015 as a non-profit research lab. He later left OpenAI and has recently been involved in a public relations and legal spat with the company and CEO Sam Altman over the direction that it’s taken.
At xAI, Musk’s team has been developing large language models and AI software products, taking on offerings from OpenAI as well as Google, Microsoft, Meta and others. X and xAI have already been intertwined, with xAI’s Grok chatbot available to users of the social media app.
In June, xAI announced it would build a supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee, to train Grok. And in September, Musk revealed part of the Memphis supercomputer, now known as Colossus, was already online.
Environmental and public health advocates have raised concerns about the breakneck speed of development in Memphis, citing a lack of community input and oversight. The facility is powered by natural gas burning turbines and xAI plans to expand and build a graywater treatment plant nearby as well.
Investors valued xAI at around $50 billion in a financing round last year. Bloomberg reported last month that the company was in talks to raise funds at a $75 billion valuation. OpenAI was closed to wrapping up a round in February at a $260 billion, while generative AI startup Anthropic was valued at $61.5 billion in a deal that closed this month.
In addition to running Tesla, SpaceX and xAI and overseeing X, Musk has spent much of his time this year in Washington, D.C., as a central figure in President Donald Trump’s second administration.
After contributing close to $300 million to help Trump and other Republican candidates and causes in the 2024 campaign, Musk was put in charge of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is eliminating government expenses and getting rid of regulations. It’s a position that puts Musk in position to make changes in ways that benefit his various businesses.
This isn’t the first time Musk has merged two of his entities.
In 2016, Tesla acquired SolarCity for $2.6 billion. The solar installer was founded by his first cousins, Lyndon and Peter Rive, and funded by Musk, who served as board chair. Tesla shareholders later sued, alleging the deal amounted to a SolarCity bailout, and a breach of fiduciary duty that enriched Musk personally. Delaware judges who heard the dispute decided in favor of Musk and Tesla, and allowed the deal to stand without any remuneration back to the automaker.
The artificial intelligence boom has sent energy demand soaring. Some of the supercomputers sucking up all that power are helping to find new energy sources.
Fusion energy is the process of forcing two hydrogen atoms to combine and form one helium atom, which releases huge amounts of power. It uses a stellarator, a type of fusion reactor invented in the 1950’s that produces heat.
Until now, the technology was too difficult to deploy commercially.
But this old concept has brand new potential. Type One Energy, a startup based in Tennessee, claims to have proven that fusion energy will be able to produce electricity in the next decade.
“It’s going to create heat that’s going to boil water, make steam, run a turbine and put fusion electrons on the power grid on a 24/7 reliable basis,” said Type One Christofer Mowry.
AI has made it all practical.
“Things have really accelerated remarkably over the last five or six years,” Mowry said. “The supercomputers have allowed industry, academia and large institutions to develop now and actually test at large scale the science machines that demonstrate the process.”
Dozens of other companies are working on different approaches to fusion energy, but Mowry said Type One is so far the only one with the proven stellarator technology to implement at existing power plants. It will soon be tested with the Tennessee Valley Authority.
TDK Ventures is betting that Mowry is right.
“With Type One Energy solutions, we expect outsized return potential,” said Nicola Sauvage, president of TDK Ventures. “Fusion is no longer science fiction, and Type One Energy’s technology is catching up fast to the vision of this low-cost, continuous green energy.”
Type One is also backed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Centaurus Capital, GD1, Foxglove Capital, and SeaX Ventures, and has raised a total of $82.4 million.
Fusion energy is different from nuclear power, and there’s no risk of a nuclear accident. The power source has no long-term radioactive waste, and, according to Mowry, can’t be weaponized.
But for handling AI, it could be a critical solution. Fusion energy can be deployed anywhere, whether it’s next to a data center or near a large industrial park that needs clean, reliable energy.
Michael Intrator, Founder & CEO of CoreWeave, Inc., Nvidia-backed cloud services provider, gestures during the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq Market, in New York City, U.S., March 28, 2025.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
CoreWeave shares popped 19% after announcing a $2 billion debt offering.
The renter of artificial intelligence data centers powered by Nvidia chips said it had priced the notes at 9.25%, with a June 2030 maturity date. The deal represents a $500 million increase from its initial announcement.
CoreWeave said it plans to use the capital to pay off outstanding debt. The company confirmed to CNBC that the debt offering was five times oversubscribed.
In its first-quarter earnings report last week, CoreWeave said that it raised a total of $17.2 billion in equity and debt “to support its strategy to drive the next generation of cloud computing for the future of AI.” The company topped revenues expectations but posted wider-than-expected net loss and said it plans to spend big on capital expenditures to support infrastructure demand.
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During an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” last week, CEO Michael Intrator defended CoreWeave’s spending plans after some investors cast doubt on its debt, and demand durability. He said the company is meeting “demand signals” from some of its major clients.
In a call with analysts, CoreWeave said it has no debt maturities until 2028 other than payments related to vendor financing and “self-amortizing debt through committed contract payments.” The company said it had about $3.8 billion in current debt and $4.9 billion in non-current debt at the end of the quarter.
A year ago, CoreWeave announced that it had raised $7.5 billion in debt, led by Blackstone and Magnetar, to more heavily invest in its cloud data centers. CoreWeave said in its IPO prospectus that it was “one of the largest private debt financings in history and signals the confidence that debt investors have in funding our company to build and scale the next generation AI cloud.”
CoreWeave counts Nvidia and Microsoft among its biggest customers and has signed two seperate deals with OpenAI, totaling nearly $16 billion.
Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, speaks during an unveiling event in New York on Feb. 26, 2025.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Wednesday that the company hasn’t seen any signs of consumers tightening their wallets in the face of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.
Jassy’s comments came during Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting, which was held virtually on Wednesday.
“We have not seen any attenuation of demand at this point,” Jassy said during a question-and-answer portion of the meeting. “We also haven’t yet seen any meaningful average selling price increases.”
Amazon and other retailers continue to digest the impact of Trump’s tariffs. Rival retailer Walmartwarned last week that consumers could start seeing price hikes from tariffs later this month and in June. Within days, that sparked the ire of Trump, who urged the company to “EAT THE TARIFFS.”
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Targetsaid Wednesday it will likely need to hike prices on some items, while Home Depotsaid it expects to maintain its current pricing levels.
Jassy said last month the company made some “strategic forward inventory buys” to stock up on goods and is “pretty maniacally focused” on keeping prices low for shoppers.
Some third-party sellers, which account for roughly 60% of products sold, have increased prices on certain items, while others have opted to keep prices steady, Jassy said on Wednesday.
“I think that the diversity and the size of our marketplace really helps customers have the best selection of the best prices,” Jassy said.