Elon Musk’s love affair with the letter X has puzzled the internet for years, from SpaceX and xAI to the renaming of Twitter and even his child’s name. But the billionaire says the story behind his most iconic branding choice is far more practical than people think.
In a recent interview on the Nikhil Kamath WTF podcast, Musk traced his obsession with the letter X, Musk said, “It started way back in ancient times in ’99, the Precambrian era, when there were only sponges.”
He added, “There were only three one-letter domain names: X, Q, and Z. And I was like, okay, I want to create this place where it’s the financial crossroads or the financial exchange.”
His plan? A sweeping overhaul of how money moves on the internet.
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The birth of X.com
X.com was meant to solve what Musk believed was the fundamental inefficiency of banking. “The current banking system is a large number of heterogeneous databases with batch processing that are not secure,” he said. The solution, in his view, was “a single database that was real-time and secure.”
That early idea eventually morphed into PayPal, which eBay later bought. Years later, eBay offered to sell him the X.com domain back, an offer Musk accepted immediately. He kept it tucked away until another opportunity appeared.
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Why Twitter became X
That opportunity was Twitter. Musk revealed that during the 2023 acquisition, he realised “maybe this would also be an opportunity to revisit the original plan of X.com,” framing it as “a clearing house of financial transactions” or simply “a money database.”
The rebranding that confused the world now seems less like a whim and more like a return to a decades-old blueprint. Since then, X has rolled out subscription features, creator payouts, and job listings, with financial services still in development. The platform has secured money transmitter licenses across several U.S. states, but regulatory hurdles and advertiser scepticism remain significant obstacles.
Meanwhile, the letter X has quietly threaded itself through Musk’s entire business universe, from SpaceX to Model X to xAI, and even X Æ A-XII, the name of one of his children. Musk insists much of it is coincidental, but the pattern suggests otherwise: a shared vision of how information and value will move in a future shaped by his companies.
