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Elon Musk said on Friday that his xAI has acquired X, the social media app formerly known as Twitter, in an all-stock transaction for $45 billion, including $12 billion in debt. “xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk said in a post on X, adding that the combined company would be valued at $80 billion. Neither X nor xAI immediately responded to a request for comment. The billionaire’s AI startup, which was launched in 2023, recently raised $6 billion from investors in a funding round that valued the company at $40 billion, sources told Reuters earlier. Musk in February made a $97.4 billion bid with a consortium for the ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which was rejected, with OpenAI saying that the startup was not for sale. As competition in AI intensifies, xAI has been ramping up its data center capacity to train more advanced models, and its supercomputer cluster in Memphis, called “Colossus,” is touted as the largest in the world. xAI introduced Grok-3, the latest iteration of its chatbot, in February, as it tries to compete with Chinese AI firm DeepSeek and Microsoft-backed OpenAI. Musk clinched a deal in 2022 to buy X for $44 billion, ending its run as a public company since its 2013 initial public offering, declaring that “the bird is freed” once the acquisition closed. Reporting by Seher Dareen in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai and Sandra Maler
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Betty White is making her mark on the nation’s snail mail. The beloved actor of The Golden Girls fame was celebrated with a new U.S. Postal Service stamp at a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Los Angeles Zoo on Thursday. Fans who were crowded behind barricades cheered as a blue curtain dropped to reveal the stamp featuring a portrait of White against a violet-colored background with lighter shades of bubbly spots in a nod to her sparkling personality. She wears a blue polka-dot blouse, and peeking out of her blond curls is an earring shaped like a paw print. When I was working on the stamp surrounding myself with Betty White videos and pictures, I felt like I was working on a portrait of a family member, Boston-based artist Dale Stephanos said. I wanted Bettys huge personality to take center stage. The illustration is based on a photo taken by Kwaku Alston in 2010. At the celebration, singer-songwriter Ellis Hall performed a snippet of Thank You for Being a Friend, the theme song to The Golden Girls. A laughing kookaburra and other squawking birds occasionally interrupted the speakers, which surely would have delighted the animal-loving White. Animals were her kids and she loved them allany shape, size, and kind, said Richard Lichtenstein, a board member of the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association. White had worked with the zoo since its opening in 1966 until her death in December 2021, a couple weeks shy of her 100th birthday. Who didnt love Betty White? Lichtenstein said. Her smile, her sense of humor, her basic decency. Our country, our city, and, yes, even our Los Angeles Zoo, would be much better if more people followed her example. Betty White put her stamp on everyone and anyone she came in contact with. He said White’s financial support and advocacy helped make possible exhibits featuring chimps, gorillas, and elephants, among others. Lichtenstein said White set up a private foundation before her death that funds various zoo programs. This zoo, its inhabitants, and this community meant so much to Betty White just as she meant so much to all of us, said Amber McReynolds, chair of the USPS board of governors. Betty White was an American treasure. People lined up to purchase panes of 20 Forever stamps, pins, and notecards before getting first-day cancellations near a churro snack stand while schoolchildren walked by. This stamp is special because, lets face it, everybody loves Betty White, Stephanos said. By Beth Harris, Associated Press
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The U.S. Naval Academy has changed its policy and will no longer consider race as a factor when evaluating candidates to attend the elite military school, a practice it maintained even after the U.S. Supreme Court barred civilian colleges from employing similar affirmative action policies. Republican President Donald Trump’s administration detailed the policy change in a filing on Friday, asking a court to suspend an appeal lodged by a group opposed to affirmative action against a judge’s decision last year upholding the Annapolis, Maryland-based Naval Academy’s race-conscious admissions program. Days after returning to office, Trump signed an executive order on January 27 that eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion programs from the military. Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth two days later issued guidance barring the military from establishing “sex-based, race-based, or ethnicity-based goals for organizational composition, academic admission, or career fields.” The U.S. Department of Justice said that in light of those directives, Vice Admiral Yvette Davids, the Naval Academy’s superintendent, issued guidance barring the consideration of race, ethnicity or sex as a factor in its admissions process. The Justice Department said that policy change could affect the lawsuit filed by Students for Fair Admissions, a group founded by affirmative action opponent Edward Blum, which has also been challenging race-conscious admissions practices at other military academies. Blum’s group had been seeking to build on its June 2023 victory at the Supreme Court, when the court’s 6-3 conservative majority sided with it by barring policies used by colleges and universities for decades to increase the number of Black, Hispanic and other minority students on U.S. campuses. That ruling invalidated race-conscious admissions policies used by Harvard and the University of North Carolina. But it explicitly did not address the consideration of race as a factor in admissions at military academies, which conservative Chief Justice John Roberts said had “potentially distinct interests.” After the ruling, Blum’s group filed three lawsuits seeking to knock out the carve-out for military schools. The case the group filed against the Naval Academy case was the first to go to trial. But U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett in Baltimore sided with Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration in finding that the Naval Academy’s policy was constitutional. Nate Raymond, Reuters
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E-Commerce
Theres a reason Haliey Welch seemingly vanished from the internet overnight: Shes the focus of an upcoming documentary exploring her meteoric riseand dramatic fallfrom viral fame. The 22-year-old influencer will be the subject of an upcoming documentary from Emmy-winning production company Bungalow Media + Entertainment, according to Deadline. The documentary will chronicle how Welch, a young woman from a small town with no active social media presence, unknowingly created a viral moment that gave way to a global phenomenon, per a press release shared with the outlet. The documentary will focus on Welch’s “unexpected rise to fame, the scrutiny that followed,” and will expose “the incredible power social media has to crown and crucify its internet darlings, the press release continued. Welch became a viral sensation after her video interview was uploaded by the Tim & Dee TV YouTube channel, where she responded to one of their questions with the now-iconic hawk tuah catchphrase. With only a single sentence, Haliey Welch went from an unknown young woman having a night out on the town to enjoying 15 minutes of fame to global phenomenon who cemented her status in the pop culture lexicon. There are very few people who know what it is like to achieve this level of fame and live under the 24/7 microscope known as social media, Bob Friedman, producer and CEO at Bungalow Media + Entertainment, said in a statement. He adds that the documentary will chronicle Welchs journey as well as explore the highs and lows of living in the public eye. After her viral moment, Welch parlayed her 15 minutes into a business empire, launching merchandise, the Talk Tuah podcast, and a Gen Z-targeted dating app called Pookie Tools. In early December, Welch announced that she would be releasing her own cryptocurrency memecoin called $HAWK, which quickly tanked and caused Welch to disappear from the internet in a cloud of controversy. I hope yall been enjoying the crazy stories about my life unfold on social media, Welch said in a statement about the upcoming documentary. First, I was dead. Then pregnant. Now Im wanted by Interpol and in jail! Luckily, weve been working with Bungalow to start spilling the tea and the truth is actually even more bizarre than you think. To get the full story, fans will have to be patient. Release details for the documentary have yet to be announced.
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E-Commerce
The head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Friday said he is opening an investigation into the diversity practices of Walt Disney and its ABC unit, saying they may violate U.S. equal employment opportunity regulations. FCC Chair Brendan Carr wrote Disney CEO Robert Iger in a letter dated Thursday that the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts may not have complied with FCC regulations and that changes by the company may not go far enough. “I want to ensure that Disney ends any and all discriminatory initiatives in substance, not just name,” Carr wrote in the letter, which was seen by Reuters. He has sent letters to Comcast and Verizon announcing similar probes into diversity practices. “We are reviewing the Federal Communications Commissions letter, and we look forward to engaging with the commission to answer its questions,” a Disney spokesperson said. Disney recently revised its executive compensation policies to remove diversity and inclusion as a performance metric, adding a new standard called “talent strategy,” aimed at upholding the companys values. Carr said FCC’s Enforcement Bureau will be engaging with Disney “to obtain an accounting of Disney and ABCs DEI programs, policies, and practices.” Carr, who was designed chair by President Donald Trump on Jan. 20, has been aggressively investigating media companies. In December, ABC News agreed to give $15 million to Trumps future presidential library to settle a lawsuit over comments that anchor George Stephanopoulos made on air involving the civil case brought against Trump by writer E. Jean Carroll. Days after Carr took over as chair, the FCC reinstated complaints about the “60 Minutes” interview with Harris, as well as complaints about how ABC News moderated the pre-election TV debate between then-President Joe Biden and Trump. It also reinstated complaints against Comcast’s NBC for allowing Harris to appear on “Saturday Night Live” shortly before the election. Trump has sued CBS for $20 billion, claiming that “60 Minutes” deceptively edited the interview in order to interfere in the November presidential election, which he won. CBS, which is owned by Paramount Global, this week called on the FCC to dismiss the complaint “without delay,” but Carr quickly rejected the idea, saying the investigation would continue. David Shepardson and Dawn Chmielewski, Reuters
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E-Commerce
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