Twitter has ceased to be an independent company after merging with a newly formed shell firm called X, driving speculation about what Elon Musk intends for the social media platform.
Twitter "no longer exists" after being merged with X, according to an
It's unclear what the change means for Twitter, which has seen a sweeping overhaul since Musk bought the company for $44 billion 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." Musk tweeted about the move Tuesday with the single character "X".
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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 Ltd. 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. Musk also owns the domain "X.com" — the name of the online payments company he started and eventually merged with PayPal.
Musk first set up a trio of
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"Musk could create a parent structure, similar to Alphabet, where he has all his companies," said Mandeep Singh, analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. "I don't see how he can layer e-commerce or payments in Twitter right when larger peers such as Alphabet and Meta have struggled to become an everything app on the consumer side."
Twitter, which no longer has a team handling media queries, did not immediately comment on questions sent by Bloomberg News. Lawyers for the law firm representing Twitter in the case, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move sparked intense speculation on Twitter about what it meant, with 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.