Elon Musk’s SpaceX is set to go public next month. While the hype surrounding it has lifted other space-related stocks, this listing represents much more than just a rocket company making its public market debut. Before filing for its IPO, SpaceX acquired Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, which had already absorbed X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. In recent years, SpaceX has also expanded beyond rocket manufacturing into telecommunications through its Starlink division. The company coming to the Nasdaq is one that brings together rocket production, satellites, internet services, artificial intelligence research, data centers and social media, all under one conglomerate worth $1.75 trillion.
This new incarnation of SpaceX is the latest manifestation of Musk’s lifelong ambition to build an extensive business empire under the “X” brand.
This vision dates back to 1999, when Musk used his first fortune from Zip2 to launch an online bank called X.com, a predecessor to PayPal. The goal of X.com was to radically reshape the global financial system by handling banking, brokerage and insurance in one place.
The company later merged with Peter Thiel’s company and Max Levchin’s Confinity to form what would become PayPal. The merger sparked intense internal trademark debate. Musk pushed to retain X.com, arguing that PayPal seemed too narrow and restrictive, according to Jimmy Soni’s 2022 book, Founders: Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and the PayPal story. Thiel and Levchin preferred “PayPal” for its more obvious connection to the company’s core service, and focus groups found “X.com” to be ambiguous or even suggestive of adult content. After Musk was removed from his position as CEO, the new leadership quickly renamed the company as PayPal.
In 2017, Musk paid an undisclosed but significant sum to get the X.com domain back. At the time, he described it as having “great sentimental value”, although there were no immediate plans to use it.
According to a 2023 biography of the entrepreneur written by Walter Isaacson, Musk had already outlined a detailed business plan in 1999: to create a platform that would combine social media, news, e-commerce and personal finance into one seamless ecosystem, similar to China’s WeChat.
This vision began to take shape in late 2022, when Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion. He described the purchase as a way to accelerate the construction of “X” by several years. Soon after, he renamed the parent company X Corp. He renamed the platform itself to X.
Elon Musk’s obsession with the letter “X”
Musk is known for his many bizarre obsessions, including his fondness for the numbers 420 and 69. His fixation with the letter “X” is spread throughout his business empire. SpaceX itself is a stylized abbreviation for Space Exploration Technologies Corporation.This mouth. We’ll just call it SpaceXMusk said on “WTF is?” By Nikhil Kamath: “I like the idea of capitalizing the letter X just artistically.” Podcast in 2025.
He traced this preference back to the late 1990s, when he was searching for a name for his online financial venture. “There were only three one-letter domain names: X, Q, and Z,” he said on the same podcast.
He extends the idea to his other works and even his personal life. Musk named the Tesla luxury SUV Model
