Elon Musk’s 1999 company that became part of PayPal was X.com.
Musk founded X.com in March 1999 as an online financial-services company. Its early services included internet banking and electronic payments, reflecting Musk’s interest in moving traditional financial activity onto the web.
X.com merged with Confinity in 2000. Confinity operated PayPal, which became the stronger consumer brand after the merger. Musk was briefly chief executive of the combined company, but the board replaced him later in 2000 while he was on his honeymoon.
PayPal became a major online-payments business and was acquired by eBay in 2002. Musk later bought the X.com domain back from PayPal in 2017. A common mix-up is confusing X.com with the later social-media company Twitter, which Musk acquired and renamed X in 2023.