While the online feud between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump seemed to drive traffic to Musk’s social media platform X (formerly Twitter), it could also create issues for the platform’s parent company xAI.
Musk merged X and xAI earlier this year, with Bloomberg reporting this week that he was looking to raise $5 billion in debt (as well as a reported $300 million in a secondary sale) to fund the combined company.
That’s led to some awkward moments as Musk’s relationship with his former ally Trump seemed to disintegrate. In fact, The Wall Street Journal reports that on Thursday afternoon, Morgan Stanley had gathered xAI executives to pitch potential investors as Musk and Trump were posting angrily about each other on their respective social networks.
Morgan Stanley had reportedly hoped to sell the debt at around 100 cents on the dollar, but a trader told the WSJ it was trading at 95 cents on the dollar at times on Thursday. Investors also reportedly said that due to declining prices, Morgan Stanley may need to offer additional incentives, such as an increased interest rate.
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The feud between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump may be bad for the MAGA camp, but it’s proven to be beneficial for X, which has seen engagement soaring over the past 24 hours. According to new data from Sensor Tower, the app formerly known as Twitter skyrocketed up the U.S. App Store’s top charts, landing at the 23rd overall spot on June 5 — up from an average rank of No. 68 over the last 30 days.
X also saw an average rank of No. 58 over the past six months.
The ranking changes could be influenced by increased downloads and engagements with the X application.
Meanwhile, X’s ranking on Google Play in the U.S. climbed as well, up around 20 spots from the prior seven-day average and up 16 spots from the average over the past 30 days.
Sensor Tower estimates that total U.S. mobile app active users on X on June 5 increased by 6%, likely as a result of the Trump-Musk breakup, which captured the internet’s interest.
Specifically, the firm found that U.S. mobile app active users on X between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Eastern time on June 5 were up by 54% compared to the last seven days.
Trump’s own social network, Truth Social, benefited from the feud as well, as the president shared his thoughts about Musk with his followers. Compared with the last seven days, U.S. mobile app active users on Truth Social increased by more than 400%, Sensor Tower’s proprietary panel indicates.
However, X is still much larger than Truth Social, Sensor Tower notes, as it has 100x more U.S. mobile app users than Trump’s social network.
Across both apps, the number of U.S. mobile app active users between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Eastern reached a 90-day high.
X is continuing to grow its rank in the wake of the Trump-Musk breakup. As of the time of writing, the app is the 19th top free iPhone app on the U.S. App Store. Truth Social is No. 14 in the Social Networking category, but is ranked below No. 150 overall on the free iPhone apps chart on the U.S. App Store.
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X, formerly Twitter, announced on Friday that it has partnered with Polymarket, naming it the platform’s official prediction market partner. Launched in 2020, Polymarket allows users to bet on the outcomes of real-world events using cryptocurrency.
Although the companies didn’t announce specifics about the partnership, they shared that they will be launching “an integrated product to deliver data-driven insights and recommendations.” Polymarket predictions will be combined with X data to deliver live insights, with real-time annotations of market moves from Grok and relevant X posts, Polymarket explained in a press release.
The product will be the first in “a suite of integrations and unique experiences” that will emerge from the partnership, the company said.
“Combining Polymarket’s accurate, unbiased, and real-time prediction market probabilities with Grok’s analysis and X’s real time insights will enable us to provide contextualized, data-driven insights to millions of Polymarket users around the world instantaneously,” said Shayne Coplan, founder and CEO of Polymarket, in the press release. “We look forward to enhancing X and Polymarket users’ ability to make instant sense of breaking news and make informed decisions about the future as we continue to scale our platform.”
In 2024, over $8 billion in predictions were made on Polymarket across politics, current events, pop culture, and more.
The news comes nearly a year after Polymarket partnered with AI-powered search engine Perplexity to display news summaries of events. This happened around the same time that Polymarket partnered with Substack to allow writers to embed prediction data from its platform into their posts.
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Well, it finally happened. This town wasn’t big enough for the two towering egos of billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, and now they’re duking it out publicly, albeit from their own separate corners of the web.
Musk is taking to his own social media platform, X, to take jabs at Trump, and Trump is firing back on Truth Social and Fox News.
The squabble comes a few days after Musk stepped down from leading DOGE, and after Musk repeatedly disparaged Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” a spending package that House Republicans passed in May. Musk has called the bill “a disgusting abomination,” saying it would significantly increase the federal budget deficit by up to $3.8 trillion in additional debt over the next decade through increased defense spending, immigration enforcement measures, and tax cuts.
In a way, the siloed nature of this shouting match feels poetic. It exposes the cracks in the Musk-Trump political alliance and underscores how powerful social media and loyal fan bases have become in shaping policy narratives and swaying voter perception.
Trump is doing what he often does, trying to discredit a potential rival. For Musk, it’s more of a gamble. Tesla has already taken a hit from his political grandstanding and flirtations with the Trump administration. More of the same could further damage his business. Or it could cement his status as an anti-establishment voice — a tech mogul who doesn’t need traditional power structures to influence the American political landscape.
Musk has suggested in X posts that he would unseat politicians who backed Trump’s budget bill in the 2026 midterms. Pinned to the top of his X account is a poll asking if it’s “time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?” Two hours after the post, 82.3% of nearly 1 million voters said “yes.”
Musk said just a couple weeks ago that he would be taking a step away from politics to focus on his businesses. And it’s those businesses that Trump seems keen to punish. On Truth Social, Trump accused Musk of going “CRAZY” because the administration “took away his EV mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!)”
Trump, here, is referring to the EV tax credit under former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. There never was a mandate that forced anyone to buy EVs. Trump’s spending bill would end the tax credit by the end of this year.
On X, Musk countered that claim, and said he never had eyes on the bill before it passed the House.
Trump also said that Musk blew up after the president refused to put someone Musk “knew very well to run NASA” because he didn’t think it would be “appropriate.” He suggested that the easiest way to save money in the federal budget, “billions and billions of dollars,” would be to “terminate Elon’s governmental subsidies and contracts.”
Musk’s businesses have been awarded at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits over the next two decades, with nearly two-thirds pledged in the last five years, per a February Washington Post report.
Axios reported Wednesday part of Musk’s frustration with Trump’s spending bill and the administration at large was failing to win favorable treatment for his ventures. Not coincidentally, Musk spent more than $260 million to get Trump elected.
As the fight between Musk and Trump develops, it’s starting to get personal.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk posted in response to a video of Trump throwing shade at Musk on Fox News. “Such ingratitude.”
A few hours later, Musk decided to drop “the really big bomb.”
“[Donald Trump] is in the Epstein files,” Musk wrote on X. “That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”
A number of politicians, including Republican senators, have called for Trump to release government files on financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was implicated in a child sex abuse ring and later committed suicide.
Musk said that his aerospace company, SpaceX, would begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft “immediately” in response to Trump’s threat to cancel contracts awarded to the billionaire’s companies. (NASA uses Dragon for some missions.) And in a reply to a post on X about whether Trump should be impeached, Musk responded, “Yes.”
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