How Owning Twitter Helped Musk Launch Grok

Business Onion · 2:39

On October 27, 2022, Elon Musk took control of Twitter in a $44 billion deal. His companies had always sold through him instead of through ads — the founder is the ad — and now he owned the place where that ad ran. In November 2023 his AI company, xAI, launched Grok to paying X subscribers; in December 2024 it was switched on for every X user; by March 2026 about 117 million users a month used Grok's features, by the company's own count. Then X was merged into xAI, xAI into SpaceX, and SpaceX replaced the Twitter buyout loans with cheaper debt. Starlink shows the method still works where people queue to buy, and Tesla's own filings name its one cost. Part 3 of 3 — THE FOUNDER IS THE AD. The final part. Numbers & sources: Twitter deal value $44B, closed Oct 27, 2022 (Twitter 8-K). Musk's followers at closing: about 110M (Guinness World Records; AP). Grok: about 117M monthly active users of Grok's AI features at Mar 31, 2026 (89M at Dec 31, 2025), within about 550M monthly users of X and Grok combined — company-reported (SpaceX prospectus, June 2026). Mergers: X into xAI on Mar 28, 2025; xAI into SpaceX on Feb 2, 2026. Debt: X's two term loans (effective rates 12.40% and 9.80% at Dec 31, 2025) repaid in March 2026 from a $20B SpaceX bridge loan at 4.58%. Starlink subscribers: 4.4M (end-2024) → 8.9M (end-2025) → 12.0M (June 30, 2026). SpaceX advertising expense in 2025: $69M for the whole company including X and xAI, "primarily" for Starlink; $69M ÷ 4.5M net new subscribers ≈ $15 (our division; excludes hardware discounts). SpaceX: "We expect Connectivity SG&A to increase… in 2026 as we introduce marketing spend to support growth." Tesla 10-Q (Apr 23, 2025): "Any such negative perceptions, whether caused by us or not, may harm our brand and our business (including sales)." Sources: Twitter 8-K (Oct 2022); Tesla annual meeting of May 16, 2023 (Tesla's official video); SpaceX 424B4 prospectus (June 12, 2026) and Q2 2026 results (Aug 4, 2026); Tesla 10-Q Q1 2025 and 10-K FY2025; The Henry Ford, "Advertising the Model T" (2015).