Twitter Purchase and X

Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter on Apr 14, 2022 and took control on Oct 27, 2022 for about $44 billion, then renamed it X and promised an "everything app". As of Nov 9, 2026 X is part of SpaceX, and its payments service, X Money, opened only to paying US subscribers in Jul 2026.

11:46 As of Nov 9, 2026, the company Elon Musk bought as Twitter is X, a product of SpaceX: xAI acquired X in Mar 2025, SpaceX acquired xAI on Feb 2, 2026, and since Oct 12, 2026 X Premium is sold in one subscription with Grok and Cursor. The "everything app" Musk promised exists in part: X Money, with a Visa debit card and transfers between users, began reaching paying US subscribers on Jul 27, 2026. Musk's offer for Twitter was made public on Apr 14, 2022, and at TED that evening Chris Anderson's first question was why he had made it.

Status: Changed. Last checked: Nov 9, 2026.

The purchase closed at the price Musk offered, so that part was delivered. What he said the purchase was for, an everything app with "your entire financial world" in it, has arrived later, smaller and in another corporate form, which is why this page says Changed.

The offer and his words

Musk's letter to Twitter's chairman is dated Apr 13, 2022 and was attached to an SEC filing. He offered $54.20 a share in cash and wrote: "Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it." He called the price "my best and final offer." At TED he said Twitter had become "the de facto town square" and that it should open source its algorithm. Twitter's board accepted on Apr 25, 2022, a deal valued at about $44 billion.

He named the larger goal on Oct 4, 2022: "Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app" (his post).

Every promise and what happened

Promised	When he said it	What happened
Buy Twitter at $54.20 a share	Apr 13, 2022, letter	Musk took control on Oct 27, 2022 (CNBC)
Open source the algorithm	Apr 14, 2022, TED	Part of the code posted on GitHub on Mar 31, 2023 (TechCrunch); the For You timeline code on Jan 20, 2026 (TechCrunch)
X, "the everything app"	Oct 4, 2022, post	Grok and payments added; payments US only, for subscribers (TechCrunch)
"Your entire financial world" "in the months to come"	Jul 25, 2023 (CNBC)	Deposits, a debit card and transfers from Jul 27, 2026; accounts held at Cross River Bank, since X Money is not a bank (TechCrunch)
Payments "rolled out by the end of next year" (2024)	Oct 26, 2023, staff call (Fortune)	Not by the end of 2024; Visa named first partner Jan 28, 2025 (CNBC)
X Money early public access "next month" (Apr 2026)	Mar 10, 2026, post	Opened to US Premium and Premium+ subscribers Jul 27, 2026 (9to5Mac)

What happened since

The deal on hold, then closed. On May 13, 2022, Musk tweeted that the deal was "temporarily on hold" over Twitter's count of fake accounts; on Oct 4, 2022 he said he would go through with it, as the court record of the later investor lawsuit sets out (order of Jul 6, 2026). He took control on Oct 27, 2022, and Twitter's chief executive and finance chief left (CNBC).

36:10 Paid verification. A week later, at the Baron Investment Conference on Nov 4, 2022, Musk said the plan was to get as many users as possible "payment verified" at $8 a month, with their replies and searches ranked first and money shared with creators. That plan is today's X Premium; on Oct 12, 2026 it became part of The X Subscription, with plans from $8 to $200 a month.

Twitter becomes X. The bird logo was replaced with an X on Jul 24, 2023 (CNBC). Musk wrote the next day that "this is not simply a company renaming itself" (CNBC).

New owners, inside Musk's companies. On Mar 28, 2025, Musk said xAI had acquired X in an all-stock deal valuing X at $33 billion, which he put as $45 billion less $12 billion of debt (CNBC). Linda Yaccarino, chief executive since 2023, announced on Jul 9, 2025 that she was leaving (CNBC). SpaceX then acquired xAI, and with it X, on Feb 2, 2026, valuing the combined company at $1.25 trillion (CNBC); SpaceX listed on Nasdaq on Jun 12, 2026 (CNBC). The xAI and Grok page follows that company and its chatbot.

The first audited numbers. SpaceX's IPO filing counted about 550 million monthly users across X and Grok as of Mar 2026, 117 million of them using Grok.

X Money. After Musk's Apr 2026 date, X Money left its invite-only beta on Jul 27, 2026 for US Premium and Premium+ subscribers, with a debit card that works with Apple Pay, free transfers between users and up to 6% interest for Premium+ (TechCrunch). Since Sep 2, 2026, X pays its US creators only through X Money (TechCrunch). No launch outside the US has been dated.

In court. The SEC sued over Musk's late disclosure of his first 5% of Twitter; a trust tied to him agreed to pay a $1.5 million penalty without admitting wrongdoing (CNBC), and Judge Sparkle Sooknanan approved it in Jul 2026 (The Next Web). In a class action by investors who sold Twitter shares between May 13 and Oct 4, 2022, a San Francisco jury found Musk's May 13 and May 17 tweets false; on Jul 6, 2026 Judge Charles Breyer upheld the verdict on the first and set it aside on the second (order). Musk filed a notice of appeal to the Ninth Circuit (Mealey's).

We think

We think X Money opens to X users who do not pay for a subscription in the US before it launches in any other country. Every step so far (beta, subscribers, creator payouts) has widened it inside the US on one bank partner, and no country outside the US has a date.

Confidence: Likely. Check by: Jun 2027.

We think SpaceX will report X and Grok users as one figure in its filings for at least the next year rather than splitting out X alone, since its IPO filing already counted them together and the Oct 2026 subscription sells them as one product.

Confidence: Possible. Check by: Oct 2027.