Space entrepreneur Elon Musk, the head of Tesla, has purchased the X.com domain name from PayPal.
Musk confirmed the purchase in a tweet thanking PayPal for enabling him to purchase the domain name back. Financial technology news site Finextra reports he has no plans for the domain at this time.
According to the report, X.com was the brand name Musk created for a financial service startup that later merged with Confinity to become PayPal. The domain name was not used after PayPal was formed, but domain names with a single letter are becoming a hot item given there aren’t many around.
Finextra noted the Z.com domain name was sold for $6.4 million in 2014. PayPal did not disclose how much Musk paid for the X.com domain name.
Musk, noted the report, seems to have an affinity to the letter X given his SpaceX business and the Tesla Model X.
Musk’s purchase comes at a time when the outspoken Tesla CEO is predicting the company’s valuation could someday be bigger than Apple’s. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said in a June research report that it could happen, but only if the company capitalizes on, of all things, data. That would mean additional time, energy and focus spent beyond core operations such as vehicles — including the Model 3 — or even solar businesses.
Jonas said the market for data is big enough that Tesla stock could indeed push past Apple’s in terms of valuation.
“In our view, there’s only one market big enough to propel the stock … to the levels of Elon Musk’s aspirations: that of miles, data and content,” said Jonas.
Tesla cars operate not just as vehicles, but also as hubs able to receive and send data across networks. This fact, beyond routine, maintenance-related statistics, could also boost the value of driving a Tesla car.
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