Ark’s Cathie Wooden bets Elon Musk will flip Twitter right into a ‘tremendous app’

LISBON, Portugal — Ark Make investments founder Cathie Wooden thinks Elon Musk could be onto one thing together with his imaginative and prescient for Twitter.

“He is excited about a brilliant app like WeChat Pay,” Wooden mentioned on the Internet Summit know-how convention in Lisbon, Portugal, Wednesday.

Wooden was referring to the digital funds service of Chinese language messaging app WeChat. It’s used typically in China for issues like immediate messaging, social media and funds.

WeChat has been touted because the archetype of a phenomenon generally known as “tremendous apps.” These apps act as all-in-one platforms that serve a spread of person wants spanning immediate messaging, banking and journey.

Tesla CEO Musk has already hinted at plans to make Twitter a brilliant app. Final month, he tweeted that purchasing Twitter was an “accelerant to creating X, the all the pieces app.”

“Bear in mind [Musk] began within the funds trade … he offered his firm to PayPal,” Wooden mentioned. “He and [Twitter co-founder] Jack Dorsey working collectively, I feel, might flip this into a brilliant app.”

Twitter might in future look extra like a digital pockets, Wooden mentioned: “So that you do all of your banking there, possibly there’s one thing they’re doing with Money App,” the web funds app developed by Dorsey’s fintech agency Sq..

“You do all of your buying there, you get your loans there — it is your financial institution department in a pocket,” she added. “I feel they will get this completed.”

Wooden, a famous Tesla bull, mentioned Ark has invested in Twitter as a part of Musk’s $44 billion deal to take the corporate personal.

“[Musk] really believes in vertical integration,” she mentioned, including Twitter “can be a powerful vertical integration.”

“He already has designed and is manufacturing the final word cell machine, the web on wheels — it is known as Tesla automobiles,” she added.

Nonetheless, Musk’s takeover of the agency is the topic of great scrutiny by regulators and civil rights activists who worry he could permit dangerous content material to proliferate.

Addressing these considerations, Wooden mentioned the “darkness” of Twitter was in its “opacity” round content material moderation selections. “We did not see the algorithms and the way they have been working,” she mentioned.

She added she thinks Musk might flip Twitter into open-source software program, the place the code will be reviewed, modified and shared by the general public.