Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, has acquired his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, he announced in a post on X Friday. “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 said in the post. “xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent.” The acquisition places X — the highly influential social media platform Musk purchased in 2022 under its former name, Twitter — firmly under the umbrella of Musk’s AI startup, which he founded in 2023 to compete with OpenAI. While xAI’s products, including its AI chatbot Grok, were tightly integrated into the X platform before this deal, Friday’s acquisition further combines two of Musk’s most high-profile companies. Musk — who also leads Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink — notes in his post that this deal values X at $33 billion (lowered from an enterprise value of $45 billion due to the company’s $12 billion in debt). Read more at the link in the bio 👆 *Post was updated for more details. Article by Maxwell Zeff Image Credits: SAUL LOEB / AFP / Getty Images #TechCrunch #technews #artificialintelligence #ElonMusk #Twitter #X #socialmedia

According to a report from the Financial Times, Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun plans to leave the company to start his own venture, focusing on advanced AI systems called “world models” that aim for human-level intelligence. LeCun, a Turing Award winner and head of Meta’s Fundamental AI Research Lab (FAIR) since 2013, has increasingly been at odds with Mark Zuckerberg’s push to rapidly roll out large language models (LLMs) and AI products. Zuckerberg has reorganized Meta’s AI strategy, bringing in younger AI leaders like Alexandr Wang and offering huge pay packages to attract talent from competitors. This shift followed disappointing results from Meta’s Llama 4 model and AI chatbot. Meanwhile, Meta faces pressure from investors as AI spending could top $100bn next year, which has already impacted its stock value. LeCun’s departure follows other exits and internal changes at Meta, including layoffs in the AI research unit, highlighting tensions between long-term AI research and short-term product goals. Follow us (👉@artificialintelligenceee) for everything latest from the AI world.

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Investing in the Picks and Shovels of AI AI isn’t just about chatbots and cool demos. Behind the scenes, a massive buildout is underway: Data: Hyperscalers are set to invest $2T in infrastructure over the next 5 years. Power: AI’s electricity demand could rise 40% in the next decade, pushing investment into renewables and grid upgrades. Compute: The cost of AI compute has dropped 99% since 2023, fueling exponential adoption. 📈 Blackstone is betting on the “picks & shovels” of AI data centers, chips, energy, cooling, and networking rather than chasing high-risk startups. With a $100B global data center portfolio, they’re positioning themselves as the backbone of the AI revolution. This is the real infrastructure layer of AI. Whoever controls cheap energy + data + compute will own the future. #AI #investing101 #ArtificialIntelligence #Blackstone #DataCenters #Investing #TechInfrastructure #ainews #energy #DigitalEconomy

On Election Day, two AI startups tried convincing the world their AI chatbots were good enough to be an accurate, real-time source of information during a high-stakes presidential election: xAI and Perplexity. Elon Musk’s Grok failed almost instantly, offering wrong answers about races’ outcomes before the polls had even closed. On the other hand, Perplexity offered helpful, real-time election insights and maps throughout the night, linking to reliable resources and offering historical context where appropriate. Perplexity took a risky bet, and it paid off. Read all about the risky bet and how it paid off at the link in the bio 👆 Article by Maxwell Zeff Image Credits: Maxwell Zeff #TechCrunch #technews #artificialintelligence #startup #chatbot #AI #genAI

"yet" 👀 In October, OpenAI released its highly anticipated search product, ChatGPT Search, to take on Google. The industry has been bracing for this moment for months, prompting Google to inject AI-generated answers into its core product earlier this year, and producing some embarrassing hallucinations in the process. That mishap led many people to believe that OpenAI’s search engine would truly be a “Google killer.” TechCrunch reporter Maxwell Zeff tested OpenAI’s search product. While he found it impressive in some ways and he believes it offered a glimpse of what an AI-search interface could one day look like, for now, Max thinks it’s still too impractical to use as my daily driver. Read how Max came to this conclusion at the link in the bio 👆 Image Credits: Win McNamee / Staff / Getty Images #TechCrunch #technews #artificialintelligence #OpenAI #ChatGPT #chatbot

Download that thang Haliey Welch, the 22-year-old who went viral for her “Hawk Tuah” video, has managed to turn her brief moment of fame into a full-fledged career. In just a few months, Welch has rapidly risen to fame, amassing around 5 million followers across various social media platforms. After recently releasing her own podcast titled “Talk Tuah,” she’s now venturing into the tech world with a new AI-powered dating advice app called Pookie Tool. Launched on the App Store this week, Pookie Tool offers a range of features aimed at Gen Z singles, such as an AI chatbot to help with conversation starters and general dating advice, outfit recommendations for dates, tips to enhance your dating profile, and even a zodiac compatibility feature. Read more on Talk Tuah at the link in the bio 👆 Article by Lauren Forristal Image Credits: Krystle / Hubble Studio; Talk Tuah #TechCrunch #technews #HawkTuah #dating #apps #socialmedia

Step aside ChatGPT 👋 On Thursday Google launched an iOD app for its AI-powered assistant globally. Until now, iOS users either had to use the Google app or mobile web to chat with the AI technology. The new Gemini iOS app supports text-based prompts in 35 languages. Plus, users can have a conversation with Gemini through its Gemini Live feature in 12 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Hindi, Portuguese, Arabic, Italian, Indonesian, Japanese, Turkish and Vietnamese. Google said it aims to introduce support for additional languages soon. While some of the other features of Gemini, such as asking it to suggest recipes or seeking help for studies, were already available through the Google app and mobile web, Gemini Live is a new addition to the native iOS app. Read more on the new Gemini iOS app at the link in the bio 👆 Article by Ivan Mehta Image Credits: NurPhoto / Contributor / Getty Images #TechCrunch #technews #artificialintelligence #Gemini #Google #chatbot

Dr. Roman Yampolskiy, who first proposed the concept of AI safety, now warns that advanced AI systems may be uncontrollable and could endanger billions of lives. He notes that machine intelligence is accelerating exponentially, while our ability to make AI safe grows only slowly, creating a widening gap between capability and control. According to Yampolskiy, the real danger isn’t chatbots bypassing filters but the emergence of superintelligent systems whose decisions could reshape humanity in ways we can’t foresee or stop. Follow us (👉@artificialintelligenceee) for everything latest from the AI world. Source: anarchy_build/X Credits: @steven

Elon Musk’s AI company xAI has laid off around 500 workers from its data annotation team, roughly a third of the team, as part of a strategic shift toward specialist AI tutors. The company emailed employees saying it would scale back generalist AI tutor roles while expanding specialist positions across domains like STEM, finance, medicine, and safety. Workers affected by the layoffs were informed they would be paid through the end of their contract or November 30, but their access to company systems ended immediately. The data annotation team is key to developing xAI’s chatbot Grok, helping it contextualize and categorize raw data. Before the layoffs, xAI asked employees to complete tests assessing their strengths to determine future roles. The tests covered areas from coding and finance to Grok’s “personality and model behavior” and safety tasks like red teaming. xAI has announced plans to grow its specialist AI tutor team tenfold, signaling a move toward building more focused, domain-specific expertise for Grok. Follow us (👉@artificialintelligenceee) for everything latest from the AI world.