Tesla is paying $20,000 a year to be on Elon Musk’s X, and it’s not clear why

Tesla keeps creating new paying accounts on Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) to the point that it is now likely paying around $20,000 per year to be on the social media platform.

It’s not clear what it is getting in return.

Public companies, like Tesla, have to disclose any “related transaction” that may have conflict of interest between its executives or board members and any other companies that they have interests in.

For example, Tesla often disclosed dealings with SpaceX over the shared use of Elon Musk’s plane or the latter’s purchase of Tesla parts.

Now Tesla is going to have more to disclose and possibly justify to its shareholders as it is starting to spend more money on X (formerly Twitter), which is under the ownership of its CEO, Elon Musk.

X has been having issues behind being profitable with advertising, and it has turned to subscription services.

Twitter Blue, now X Premium, is a $8 per month subscription service for X users. It “verifies” the user, gives them a blue badge, and gets them more visibility.

But X is also pushing a subscription for businesses called “Verified Organizations” with similar features:

It is quite expensive. X charges $1,000 a month for the main account and then $50 per month for every other “affiliated account.”

Tesla is paying for this service and Electrek has found 13 accounts affiliated to Tesla’s verified org account.

It means that Tesla is paying $1,650 per month – or roughly $20,000 per year – to be on X.

Where things are starting to look excessive is that Tesla appears to be launching several new accounts requiring an additional $50 per month payment for every aspect of its business since Musk took over Twitter and launched this new subscription service.

For example, Tesla launched a new “Tesla North America” account last month, a new “Tesla Europe” account in January, a new “Tesla AI” account in May, a new “Tesla Megapack” account in January, and new “Tesla Optimus” account also in January.

This strategy is unique to X as Tesla operates only a single official account on other social media platforms, like Instagram and Youtube.

The Tesla Optimus account has posted a single tweet since it was created in January:

Tesla has been paying $50 per month for this account which has been sitting useless for most of the time.

The automaker has also been paying “affiliate accounts” for executives like Franz von Holzhausen, Drew Baglino, and Tom Zhu, who all rarely use their accounts for anything other than repost Tesla’s own official posts.

Electrek’s Take

Update: Tesla fans seem to be missing the point here. They are focusing on the amount, which everyone agrees is meaningless for Tesla. It’s not the amount the problem, it is the decision-making being a slippery slope. Ironically, I explained it on X:

I think Elon Musk is trying to use Tesla as an example of how he would like companies to use X, but Tesla shareholders should ask themselves if that’s good for Tesla or if it’s just good for X.

Creating a bunch of new accounts, something Tesla doesn’t do on other more popular social media platforms seems excessive to me – especially when you consider that most of these accounts simply repost from other Tesla accounts.

That seems like a waste of $50 per month for each account. Obviously, that’s not much for a $750 billion company, but it does raise eyebrows when that waste goes straight into the pockets of X, which is owned by Elon Musk, who also happens to be the CEO of Tesla.

I think X has the potential to become something great, but you can’t force it like that. It is going to happen or it won’t, but I don’t think doing shady things like that is going to help.