xAI buying Twitter / X seems pretty sketchy. In practice, I guess it means the platform will live on for a while. I would not bet on xAI’s long-term success, though… OpenAI has billions of dollars of real revenue. xAI has effectively none, I think, outside of Twitter itself.

@manton it’s just a shell game.

@manton I don’t even think Twitter has much real revenue when you take away all the payments and stuff they have to pay for

@manton.org I don’t even think Twitter has much real revenue when you take away all the payments and stuff they have to pay for

@manton Seems like a shell game. Moving money between companies he owns to artificially inflate one over the other, leveraging it for loans or to better absorb losses. A classic billionaire maneuver, but the real question is whether it holds up long-term

@manton I’d imagine this is some scheme to free up Musks finances. He was leveraged to the hilt and if Tesla keeps falling I hope he gets a margin call.

@manton What about the infinite money coming from Saudis and a16z can keep pumping because they will make money off grift via the govt

@manton Yes. How far are you zooming out though :laughcryemoji:

@manton.org I've gotta take the long view or I will go insane. 🙂

@manton sorry … the long view is not good …. not lost … but not good … Musk may go sooner rather than later .. and even Trump will centrally be pushing up daisies … but the enablers are alive and well. They didn’t come up with these ideas all by themselves.

@manton I like that mindset

@vmstan @manton right! He can use the valuation of xAI to pay off his Twitter investors, including himself

@manton Don't forget the U.S. tax dollars he'll collect from farming out no-bid government contracts to himself.