Elon Musk is big on the letter X — he’s used it in his companies and even for the names of his children — but the origin of the obsession comes from an internet domain he was able to acquire many years ago.
In a recent appearance on the Nikhil Kamath podcast, Musk revealed the surprisingly practical origins of what has become one of his most recognizable branding choices. The story begins in 1999 with X.com, one of only three single-letter domain names available at the dawn of the commercial internet era, and traces through to his controversial acquisition of Twitter, which he renamed X in 2023.
“It started way back in ancient times in ’99, the Precambrian era, when there were only sponges,” Musk said, characterizing the early internet with his typical humor. “There were only three one-letter domain names: X, Q, and Z (available). And I was like, okay, I want to create this place where it’s the financial crossroads or the financial exchange.”
The vision behind X.com was ambitious: solving money from an information theory standpoint. Musk explained his critique of the traditional banking system: “The current banking system is a large number of heterogeneous databases with batch processing that are not secure. If we could have a single database that was real time and secure, that would be more efficient from a monetary, from an information theory standpoint than a large number of heterogeneous databases that batch process very slowly and insecurely.”
That original X.com eventually evolved into PayPal and was acquired by eBay. But the story didn’t end there. “Someone reached out from eBay and said, ‘Hey, do you want to buy the domain name back?’ And I was like, sure,” Musk recalled. He held onto the domain for years, waiting for the right opportunity.
That opportunity came with Twitter. “When I was acquiring Twitter, I was like, well, maybe this would also be an opportunity to revisit the original plan of X.com, which is to create this clearing house of financial transactions. Basically, to create a more efficient database — a money database is a way to think about it.”
The revelation provides new context for Musk’s transformation of Twitter into X, a move that puzzled many observers when it was announced in July 2023. What seemed like an eccentric rebranding now appears to be part of a decades-long vision to create what Musk calls an “everything app” — a Western equivalent to China’s WeChat that would handle social media, payments, banking, and more.
Since the rebranding, X has introduced features like subscription services, creator payments, and job listings, though the ambitious financial services component remains largely unrealized. The company has secured money transmitter licenses in multiple U.S. states, signaling serious intent to move beyond social media. However, regulatory hurdles, advertiser concerns, and the challenge of rebuilding trust in the platform have slowed progress toward Musk’s original 1999 vision of a comprehensive financial exchange.
The letter X has become Musk’s signature throughout his business empire: SpaceX, the Model X Tesla, xAI (his artificial intelligence company), and even in his personal life — he named one of his children X Æ A-XII. Musk says these were sort of incidental — SpaceX stands for Space Exploration Technologies, and he liked how the name looked visually when shortened to SpaceX, and he says that his partner Grimes was the one behind naming his child X. But what once seemed like quirky branding now appears to be a consistent thread connecting Musk’s ventures to a foundational idea about reimagining how information and value flow through digital systems.