Elon Musk teases plans for WeChat-like X super app

SpaceX CEO and billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday announced his plans to create a mysterious app called “X,” just hours after taking a U-turn and agreeing to buy Twitter for its original price of US$44 billion.

Despite hints about its development on multiple occasions over the last year, Musk has provided few details about his plans for “X.” Here is what we know so far.

Musk’s X app is going to be a super app akin to China’s WeChat and Singapore’s Grab. The Tesla CEO believes that the US, and by extension the world, needs a super app.

“If you’re in China, you kind of live on WeChat,” Musk said on the All-In podcast in May. “It does everything. It’s sort of like Twitter, plus PayPal, plus a whole bunch of things all rolled into one, with a great interface. It’s really an excellent app, and we don’t have anything like that outside of China.”

With over 1 billion users, WeChat is the most popular super app in China. It offers a suite of services to its users such as messaging, social networking, peer-to-peer payments and e-commerce shopping. Similarly, Grab is a popular super app in South East Asia offering rides, food delivery and financial services.

Musk believes that the acquisition of Twitter will accelerate his plans of creating this super app that he envisions. On Wednesday, Musk tweeted, “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.”

Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2022

Despite Musk’s plan to rebrand Twitter as a free speech platform, his willingness to transform Twitter into a super app like WeChat has drawn criticism from some users. Many people consider WeChat to be a Chinese government surveillance tool where content is heavily censored.

However, it remains to be seen how things will pan out for Musk’s plan for the X super app. It will be interesting to see how the app competes against established platforms like Facebook, Google Pay, Uber, Amazon, WhatsApp and Telegram to name a few.