Elon Musk isn’t afraid to commit to the bit.
One day before he officially acquired Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, he shared a video on his account that showed him carrying a sink into the social media platform’s former headquarters in San Francisco.
“Entering Twitter HQ — let that sink in!,” Musk wrote.
During Friday’s episode of the “All-In” podcast, Musk said that the video, which now has 1.2 million likes and 202,000 reposts, almost didn’t happen.
“Well, I think the store was confused because my security team was asking for any kind of sink, and normally, people wouldn’t ask for any kind of sink because you need a sink that fits in your bathroom or connects to a certain kind of plumbing,” Musk said. “So, they’re trying to ask, ‘What kind of faucets do you want?’ No, I just wanted a sink.”
Musk said the store almost didn’t sell them a sink out of concern.
“The store was confused that we just wanted a sink and didn’t care what the sink connected to,” Musk said. “They were, like, almost not letting us buy the sink because they thought maybe we’d buy the wrong sink.”
“It’s just rare that somebody wants a sink for sink’s sake,” Musk said.
Representatives for Musk and X did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Twitter, now known as X, underwent major changes after Musk completed his takeover, including layoffs, office closures, and the discontinuation of the original blue checkmark verification feature.
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Another significant shift happened this March when Musk announced that his AI company, xAI, acquired X in an all-stock deal.
“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined,” Musk wrote. “Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent. This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”
Grok, a generative chatbot that debuted on the social media platform in November 2023, is just one example of how Musk is encouraging synergy.
The chatbot, powered by a large language model with the same name, can answer users’ queries on X and in Tesla vehicles. It also has a stand-alone website.
Although Musk has shared plans to expand Grok’s capabilities, the system has encountered some challenges. In July, the chatbot faced criticism after it shared several antisemitic posts, prompting xAI to apologize for its “horrific behavior.”
“After careful investigation, we discovered the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the @grok bot,” the company wrote on X.
The incident occurred days before xAI debuted Grok 4, the latest iteration of the chatbot.
