Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, recently attempted a hostile bid for Twitter Inc., which was rejected by the social media platform’s board. However, Musk is still pursuing a takeover and has started on a path to do so by forming three holding companies with three variations of the name “X Holdings.”

Records filed in Delaware show that Elon Musk has formed three companies using “X Holdings” in various ways. He and his investing partners are reportedly putting money in one of the entities. According to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the funds in this entity will be used to purchase Twitter shares in a tender offer. A subsidiary is expected to merge with Twitter.

As of now, it is not known whether Musk intends to affiliate his other companies such as Tesla Inc., and SpaceX with the holding company. He has been considering it from 2012. In 2020, he had said that “X” was a good name for a parent company. Incidentally he owns the domain X. It was the name he used to start an online payments company, which was later merged with PayPal.

Last week, during a discussion with TED’s Chris Anderson, Musk mentioned that creating such a parent company would be “tricky.” He added that Tesla is a public traded company. He also noted that each of the four companies: Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Co. and Neuralink had different investor bases. He said that it was not easy to “combine these things.”

Other tech companies have restructured themselves and have formed new holding companies. One of the earliest to do so was Google, in 2015 and Aplhabet Inc. is its parent company. Early this year Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave his holding company a new name called Meta. It is the parent organization of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus and a few other subsidiaries.

Image  Wikimedia