Elon MuskS ‘ SpaceX will be released next month. While there is hype around it raised other space-related stocks, this listing represents much more than a rocket company debuting on the public market. Before its IPO filing, SpaceX acquired Musk’s AI startup, xAIwhich itself had already submerged it Xsocial media platform formerly known as Twitter. In recent years, SpaceX has also expanded beyond rocket production into telecommunications through it Starlink separation. The company coming to Nasdaq is one that encompasses rocket and satellite manufacturing, Internet services, AI research, data centers and social media all under a single conglomerate worth 1.75 trillion dollars.
This new incarnation of SpaceX is the latest manifestation of Musk’s lifelong ambition to build an all-encompassing 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 precursor to PayPal. X.com was intended to fundamentally reshape the global financial system by handling banking, brokerage and insurance all in one place.
The company later merged with Peter Thiel AND Max Levchin‘s Confinity to form what would become PayPal. The merger sparked a fierce internal debate over the brand. Musk pushed to keep X.com, arguing that PayPal seemed too narrow and restrictive, according to Jimmy SonnyThe book of 2022, Founders: Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and the PayPal Story. Thiel and Levchin favored PayPal for its clearer connection to the company’s core service, and focus groups found X.com vague or even suggestive of adult content. After Musk was ousted as CEO, the new leadership quickly rebranded the company as PayPal.
In 2017, Musk paid an undisclosed but significant amount to reclaim the X.com domain. At the time, he described it as having “great sentimental value”, despite having no immediate plans to use it.
According to Walter Isaacson2023 biography of the entrepreneur 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 a single, seamless ecosystem – similar to China’s WeChat.
This vision began to take shape in late 2022, when Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion. He described the acquisition as a way to speed up the creation of “X” by several years. Shortly thereafter, he renamed the parent company X Corp. and renamed the platform itself as X.
Elon Musk’s obsession with the letter “X”
Musk is known for his many strange obsessions, including his love of numbers 420 and 69. His fixation on the letter “X” is woven throughout his business empire. SpaceX itself is a stylized shorthand for Space Exploration Technologies Corporation.”That’s a mouthful. We’ll just call it SpaceX…I like the idea of the uppercase X just artistically,” Musk said Nikhil Kamath‘s “WTF is that?” podcast in 2025.
He traces this preference back to the late 1990s, when he was looking for a name for his online financial venture. “There were only three one-letter domain names: X, Q and Z. I was like, OK, I want to create this place where the financial crossroads is — or like the financial exchange,” he said on the same podcast.
The motive extends to his other businesses and even his personal life. Musk named TeslaModel X luxury SUV and incorporated the letter in the names of one of his sons, X Æ A-Xii, who is commonly referred to as “X” or “Lil X”.
