Musk keeps everyone guessing as Twitter holding company becomes X Corp        

Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44bn (€40.3bn) last year.

Twitter has ceased to be an independent company after merging with a newly formed shell firm called X Corp., driving speculation about what Elon Musk intends for the social media platform.

Twitter “no longer exists” after being merged with X Corp, according to an April 4 document submitted in a California court for a lawsuit filed against the company and its former chief executive officer Jack Dorsey, last year by conservative activist Laura Loomer.

It’s unclear what the change means for Twitter, which has seen a sweeping overhaul since Mr Musk bought the company for $44bn (€40.3bn) last year. The billionaire owner has in the past suggested that buying Twitter would be an “accelerant” for creating X — which he dubbed an “everything app”. 

Mr Musk tweeted about the move on Tuesday with the single character “X”.

X

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 11, 2023

The world’s second-richest man has professed his desire to make X similar to China’s WeChat, a super-app owned by Tencent Holdings used for everything from payments and booking event tickets to messaging. 

But he’s been vague about how it will fit in with his sprawling business empire, ranging from the electric car giant Tesla to Space Exploration Technologies. Mr Musk also owns the domain “X.com” — the name of the online payments company he started and eventually merged with PayPal. 

Mr Musk first set up a trio of holding companies in Delaware with a variation of the name “X Holdings” in April last year as part of his takeover bid for Twitter. But X Corp was set up on March 9 in Nevada with its merger with Twitter submitted on March 15, according to records filed in the state. 

The move sparked intense speculation on Twitter about what it meant, with Mr Musk’s tweet attracting more than 13 million views within hours. In Japan, the topic “Twitter Gone” started trending, with users joking that Twitter’s new name will resemble that of a local rock band, X Japan. 

Bloomberg