Billionaire Elon Musk's Money Game

"Shuffing the cards" for AI ambitions

On March 28, billionaire Elon Musk announced on X that he had sold the social networking platform to his own company xAI. The deal was done in the form of a stock swap. This is not the first time Mr. Musk has bought and sold his own companies. In 2016, the billionaire used Tesla shares under his control to buy his own solar energy company SolarCity for $2.6 billion. Tesla shareholders later sued, alleging that the SolarCity acquisition deal was a bailout for SolarCity and enriched billionaire Musk. However, Mr. Musk won the court's verdict on the above accusation.

Billionaire Elon Musk has profited from the Twitter/X acquisition

In the new deal, X is valued at $33 billion (from a $45 billion valuation minus $12 billion in debt), and xAI is valued at $80 billion, bringing the total value after the acquisition to $113 billion. In last month's fundraising round, xAI was valued at $75 billion. The $45 billion price tag is still higher than the $44 billion Musk paid for Twitter in October 2022, when he rebranded it as X.

"The future of xAI and X is intertwined," Musk wrote on X, adding: "Today, we are officially taking the step to combine data, models, compute, distribution, and talent." He added that the merger will "unlock enormous potential by combining xAI's advanced AI capabilities and expertise with X's vast reach." Specifically, through the X social network, xAI's Grok application can reach users more strongly. Since launching xAI in 2023, billionaire Musk has closely tied this company to X, emphasizing that access to the huge data warehouse from Twitter/X will bring great advantages to the development of xAI. Therefore, unifying X and xAI through the above deal will help billionaire Musk promote his ambition to lead in AI. Recently, xAI has increased its data center capacity to train more advanced models, developing a supercomputer cluster located in Memphis (Tennessee, USA). Called Colossus, this supercomputer cluster is introduced by xAI as the largest in the world.

Double-edged sword

In fact, billionaire Elon Musk successfully acquired Twitter and changed it to X. Initially under Musk's control, Twitter/X was not very successful because advertising revenue decreased. But after Donald Trump won the US presidential election in November 2024 and billionaire Musk played a close role in the new owner of the White House, old advertising customers quickly returned to X. This social networking platform has increased its position strongly.

Tesla is in trouble

Musk’s political advantage initially boosted Tesla’s stock price. Specifically, if the price was only $242/share on November 4, 2024 (1 day before the US presidential election), it increased to a record of about $480/share in mid-December 2024, and then fluctuated around $430/share when Mr. Trump took office on January 20.

However, it is also because of billionaire Musk's role in the White House, along with his statements supporting the far right and many related policies, that the business situation of electric car company Tesla has been seriously affected. Recently, although there have been times when it has increased again, when the market closed last week, Tesla's stock only fluctuated at $263/share. The reason is because of the political factor from the billionaire who made Tesla boycotted in many markets. It is expected that in the first quarter of 2025, Tesla will only deliver about 378,000 cars globally. This is the lowest level in the past 2 years. Tesla's sales have decreased especially sharply in the European market due to billionaire Musk's political statements towards this continent. Specifically, Tesla's car sales in Europe in the first 2 months of 2025 decreased by 49% compared to the same period last year.

The above situation causes Tesla to lose its position to its Chinese rival BYD, especially in the context that in 2024, Tesla's sales will be higher than BYD's but lower if only considering the fourth quarter of 2024.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/cuoc-choi-kim-tien-cua-ti-phu-elon-musk-185250329223540703.htm