“Twitter, Inc. merged with X Corp. and no longer exists.” This is confirmed by documents filed by Twitter in court on April 4, and noted by Slate, as noted by Numerama. This presentation came in the context of his case against American conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who accuses the platform of breaking the law by banishing her account in 2019.
But if this lawsuit has little chance of succeeding, it will have exposed a hitherto little noticed fact: the entity behind Twitter no longer bears his name, but X Corp, itself controlled by an investment fund called X Holdings.
X, a capital letter
As of April 2022, Elon Musk gradually registered different investment funds under this name (X Holdings I, II and III), which were to be used as part of his acquisition of Twitter. In March, the billionaire formalized two other companies, in Nevada: X Holdings Corp. and X Corp. then merged the previous ones with the newly created ones. This April 11, Elon Musk published a tweet in the form of a nod to this evolution, as brief as it is evocative.
Major change: Twitter Inc. no longer exists as a Delaware-registered company, but is instead under X Corp., launched in Nevada. However, this state is home to many of Elon Musk’s projects, such as his Tesla “gigafactory” aimed at producing battery-electric vehicles or his Tesla Loop, his lane reserved for the brand’s vehicles.
The letter X also has an important meaning for the businessman, in addition to being the first letter of his son’s strange given name. Musk uses it to name numerous projects, from SpaceX to the Tesla Model X to “Project X” (the official name given to his $13 billion loan to get his hands on Twitter).
“X” is also the name it has chosen for a future “multipurpose” application that would combine a social network, messaging and payment system, inspired by WeChat, and whose development status is unknown.
Note that according to Slate’s research, Twitter’s new name has yet to be used in its other ongoing cases, such as the one involving the fired former employees.
The platform’s revenues are currently in free fall, after its takeover by Elon Musk, expected to be less than 3 billion dollars in 2023, compared to 4.14 in 2022, a drop of 28%.
Source: BFM TV
