What Does X Mean to Elon Musk?

Elon Musk proposed on Monday to accumulate Twitter at $54.20 a share, a shock return to his unique $44 billion cope with the corporate after months of attempting to terminate it. In April, because the acquisition got here collectively, Mr. Musk mentioned he needed to personal Twitter so folks might communicate extra freely on the platform.

On Tuesday, although, Mr. Musk shared one other motivation for purchasing the social media firm, tweeting: “Shopping for Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the every thing app.”

What’s X?

Mr. Musk, the richest man on the planet and the chief government of the auto firm Tesla, has been skinny on particulars about what an “every thing app” would appear to be. However he has expressed curiosity in making a worldwide social media platform modeled after WeChat, which is owned by the Chinese language expertise large Tencent.

In China, WeChat is utilized by greater than a billion folks as an all-in-one social media, instantaneous messaging and cellular cost app. Used to order meals, hail cabs and discover information, it’s sewn into the material of day by day life. Mr. Musk has mentioned that if an identical app had been utilized by sufficient folks worldwide to speak, it might set up a cost system as effectively.

“I believe such an app can be actually helpful. And simply the utility of form of a spam-free factor the place you can make feedback, you can put up movies — I believe it’s necessary for content material creators to have a income share,” Mr. Musk mentioned on a podcast in Could.

In August, when a Twitter person requested Mr. Musk whether or not he had thought-about creating his personal social platform, he replied, “X.com.” Earlier that month, at Tesla’s annual shareholder assembly, Mr. Musk mentioned he had “a reasonably grand imaginative and prescient” for X as “one thing that may be very helpful to the world.”

How does Twitter issue into X?

Mr. Musk has not publicly supplied a plan or timeline for X. However he has said that, regardless of not being essential to create X, “Twitter most likely accelerates X by three to 5 years.” Ought to Mr. Musk purchase Twitter, it’s unclear if he would make X from scratch utilizing elements of Twitter, or flip Twitter into X.

Throughout a question-and-answer session with Twitter staff in June, Mr. Musk mentioned that he views the corporate as a digital city sq. “important for a functioning democracy” however that it ought to incorporate as a lot of the world as attainable. To encourage folks to make use of and keep on the platform, it ought to be extra all-encompassing, like WeChat, he mentioned.

In 2020, a Twitter person proposed that Mr. Musk create X “to make sure human survival and progress.” This model of X can be the dad or mum firm of Tesla, SpaceX, his mind pc firm Neuralink and his tunnel development firm the Boring Firm, the person recommended. Mr. Musk called the proposal a “good thought.” Whether or not X is supposed to be a conglomeration of Mr. Musk’s firms, a world WeChat or one thing else is unknown.

X can also be the identify of the three holding firms Mr. Musk registered in Delaware to accumulate Twitter. If the acquisition takes place, X Holdings I might operate as Twitter’s dad or mum firm, X Holdings II would purchase Twitter and X Holdings III would fund the deal, in line with regulatory filings.

What’s the historical past behind X?

Mr. Musk has said he has “a fondness for the letter X.” X is how Mr. Musk publicly refers to his first little one with Claire Boucher, the musician often called Grimes, however his historical past with the letter dates again to at the very least 1999, when he helped discovered X.com, a web based financial institution.

In 2000, X.com merged with Confinity, a competing software program firm. In 2001, Peter Thiel, one in every of Confinity’s founders, changed Mr. Musk as X.com’s chief government, and the corporate was renamed PayPal.

In 2017, Mr. Musk purchased the area for X.com from PayPal. The web site at present directs to a clean white web page, save a black lowercase “x” within the higher left nook. A separate web page, X.com/x, directs to a web page with a lowercase “y,” which is the nickname of Mr. Musk’s second little one with Grimes.

When Mr. Musk purchased the area, he tweeted: “Thanks PayPal for permitting me to purchase again X.com! No plans proper now, nevertheless it has nice sentimental worth to me.”

The plans, it now appears, must do with “every thing.”