Alain Jocard/Getty Images
- Elon Musk's X app is looking to build a stock-trading hub within the platform, according to Semafor.
- The outlet cited sources and a request for plans sent to large financial-data firms by X.
- Musk said, "No work is being done on this to the best of my knowledge."
Elon Musk's X app, previously known as Twitter, is seeking help in becoming a stock-trading hub for its users, Semafor reported.
Citing sources familiar with the matter and a request for plans, Semafor said the social media company has reached out to financial-data firms in the past couple of weeks, looking to garner support for the project.
"Real-time information is a powerful force, especially in the world of investing," the request said. It called for proposals related to financial features, such as live market data.
Semafor also said there were no plans for compensation in X's request, and the company asked bidders to say how much of their own money they would put toward the efforts. Though it's unclear how many proposals have been submitted, they were due last week, Semafor said.
But Musk said on X: "No work is being done on this to the best of my knowledge."
—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 3, 2023
Still, considerations for how to turn X into a trading hub would not be far off prior ideas for the platform. Users have been able to look up financial data using "Cashtags" since 2022 by typing in a dollar sign and a stock ticker symbol.
In April, Twitter also entered into a partnership with eToro to allow users to trade stocks and other assets, by giving them access to eToro's platform. But this feature hasn't yet been added, Semafor said.
Musk has had plans to create a go-to app for a variety of services, and in October, he tweeted, "Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app."
At Tesla's annual shareholder meeting last year, he said he had "a pretty grand vision" for X as "something that would be very useful to the world."
And Musk indicated in May that he might look for inspiration from Tencent's WeChat, a Chinese social media juggernaut that's one of the largest super-apps in the world.
"If you're in China, you kind of live on WeChat," he said. "It does everything — sort of like Twitter, plus PayPal, plus a whole bunch of things, and 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."