Twitter CEO Elon Musk has ambitious plans to transform Twitter into a larger financial platform—and the first steps have been taken toward this goal, of changing the corporate name and structure.
Key Details
- Elon Musk tweeted “X” on Tuesday, teasing his intentions for what he plans to turn his $44 billion social media investment into.
- In April 2022, Musk opened three shell companies in Delaware under the name “X Holdings.”
- In November, Twitter previously filed paperwork with the U.S. Treasury for licenses to develop the website into a payment processor.
- On March 9, Musk set up X Corp in Nevada and subsequently filed to merge the company with Twitter on March 15.
- As of April 4, Twitter no longer exists as a singular entity and has successfully merged the two companies, Bloomberg reports.
Why It’s News
As we previously reported, Elon Musk has long held ambitions to create an online-payments company, having helped found PayPal and registered the domain X.com for further features he did not get to implement into the startup.
Musk has ambitions to transform the social-media platform into a company worth $250 billion, and he says he can do it by integrating ideas that he wasn’t able to use at PayPal to change the financial world online for the better, turning Twitter into “the biggest financial institution in the world.”
Twitter is still a long way off from this point. Musk recently announced that Twitter’s valuation was likely less than $20 billion, well below what he paid mostly out of pocket to purchase the platform in October 2022. Considering that he previously succeeded in raising Tesla’s valuation from $25 billion to $700 billion in six years, his vision for Twitter remains within the realm of possibility.
Backing Up A Bit
The online activity of the serial entrepreneur has soured public perception of his work—with his erratic behavior, hostility toward the media, and propensity to release partisan memes on his personal page drawing him scrutiny.
He recently changed his screen name to “Harry Bolz,” after setting Twitter’s press email address to respond to media requests automatically with poop emojis. He also attempted to remove the “w” from the San Francisco Twitter location for the sign to display “Titter.”
Several of the companies under his direction have suffered in the short term. Tesla saw a significant drop in stock valuation earlier this year after failing to meet promised growth targets, while NASA administrators have raised alarms about his ability to keep Space X on schedule.
