Elon Musk Reveals the Story Behind His 'X' Obsession and Vision for a WeChat-Like Platform

Elon Musk compared X to China's WeChat.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk revealed his long-standing affinity for the letter 'X', tracing it back to the 1990s. During his appearance on Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath's "WTF is?" podcast, Musk explained that when he acquired the domain name 'X' in 1999, his vision was to revolutionize money from an information theory perspective.

"It all began in ancient times, back in '99, the pre-Cambrian era when there were only sponges. I believe there were only three one-letter domain names available: X, Q, and Z. I wanted to create a financial crossroads or exchange," Musk explained.

Musk described the current banking system as comprising numerous "heterogeneous databases" with batch processing lacking adequate security. His goal was to address money through information theory by developing "a single database that was real-time and secure, which would be more efficient from a monetary and information theory standpoint."

He recounted how X.com eventually became PayPal before being acquired by eBay. Later, someone from eBay contacted him about repurchasing the domain name. "I thought that acquiring Twitter might provide an opportunity to revisit the original X.com plan of creating a clearing house for financial transactions—essentially developing a more efficient money database," he shared.

Drawing parallels between X and China's WeChat, Musk noted, "People essentially live their lives on WeChat in China, and it's quite useful, but there's no equivalent WeChat outside of China. So the concept for X is something like WeChat++."

Regarding SpaceX, Musk explained, "Space Exploration Technologies is the company's full name, but that's too lengthy. It's a mouthful. We decided to call it SpaceX, like FedEx for space. It just happens to contain an X because 'exploration' has an X. I appreciate the aesthetic of capitalizing the X, which is why it's SpaceX."

When discussing his son Lil X, formally named X Æ A-Xii, Musk revealed that the child's mother suggested the name. "We have a kid called X2. His mother named him X. I said, 'You know, people will really think I have an obsession with X if we name our child X2. After all, I own X.com.' People will definitely think I have some kind of fetish for this letter. But she liked X and wanted to call him X," Musk recalled.