Everyone Said He Was Crazy. The Numbers Say Otherwise.
When Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion and renamed it X, the consensus was unanimous: he overpaid, he''d kill the platform, and the "everything app" vision was delusional.
Two years later: X has 600 million monthly active users (up from 450M at acquisition), X Payments is processing $2B/month, Grok AI is integrated into every feed, and creator monetization has generated $180M in payouts.
Is it WeChat yet? No. Is it a different and arguably better platform than 2022 Twitter? The data says yes.
What Actually Changed
- X Payments: Peer-to-peer payments and creator tipping launched in 22 states. Full banking license pending. If approved, X becomes a digital bank with 600M users.
- Grok AI: Built into the timeline, search, and DMs. Grok''s real-time information advantage over ChatGPT (it can read X in real-time) is genuinely useful for news and market sentiment.
- Video: Long-form video (up to 4 hours for Premium subscribers) is eating into YouTube''s creator base. Tucker Carlson''s X show averaged 80M views per episode in February.
- Communities: X Communities replaced the old Lists feature and actually work. Topic-based communities with moderation tools.
The Problems
Ad revenue is still below pre-acquisition levels. Brand safety concerns persist. The verification system (pay $8 = blue check) still confuses people. And the platform''s reputation as politically divisive limits growth in some demographics.
Investment Angle
X is private, so you can''t buy the stock. But the everything-app thesis has implications for PayPal (PYPL), Block (SQ), and traditional social media stocks (META, SNAP). If X cracks payments + social + AI, it''s competing with everyone.
