Elon Musk may be doing the unthinkable: returning to the social media platforms he once famously trashed. Despite years of public feuds with Mark Zuckerberg and criticising apps like Facebook, a report has claimed that the world’s richest man is expanding his social media footprint. The reason may be a mission to turn SpaceX into a trillion-dollar company. What’s interesting is that this report comes weeks after court documents showed that in early 2025, Musk reached out to Zuckerberg with a proposal, asking him to join forces to buy OpenAI. Musk tried to recruit his long-time rival into his legal and corporate battle against Sam Altman.
Musk’s return to ‘enemy territory’
For years, Musk has been a vocal critic of Meta-owned Instagram and Facebook. In 2018, he deleted his personal accounts and his companies’ pages, later telling Joe Rogan that Instagram leads to “unhappiness.” He even briefly banned users on X from promoting their Instagram profiles.However, a report by The New York Times says that a verified Instagram account with the handle @elonmusk recently surfaced and it is currently private with no posts. Even more surprising is a verified TikTok account under his name posted its first video last week – a “supercut” of achievements from Tesla and SpaceX captioned “Ad Astra” (to the stars).
Elon Musk wants to reach wide audience ahead of IPO
But what is the reason behind this (alleged) sudden change of heart? Reports point to the upcoming SpaceX Initial Public Offering (IPO). To ensure the rocket company’s debut is a success, Musk needs to reach the widest audience possible to drum up investor interest, the report said.While X is his own platform that he uses to broadcast messages,, TikTok and Instagram offer access to billions of potential investors and fans that he cannot reach on X alone. If the IPO is successful, it could propel Musk to becoming the planet’s first trillionaire.The move appears to be a calculated retreat from his “X-only” stance. By utilising TikTok, which US President Donald Trump said helped him win elections for the second term, and potentially Instagram, Musk is pushing SpaceX as well as his other companies Neuralink and The Boring Company to a global audience.
