If nothing else, you want to do this merger after the check clears from some new investors, for two reasons: it provides a high valuation you can use to minimize the wasted equity, and because it is highly dilutive of X.ai shareholders to transfer a lot of their equity to a Twitter which is not remotely worth $44b, you want all shareholders in before you soak them in the merger, rather than after, when they can bail or demand revised terms which reflect the actual low value of Twitter now dragging down X.ai.

Yes. Probably that was wash trading to provide a fake valuation to justify the merger price.