Ark’s Cathie Wooden bets Elon Musk will flip Twitter right into a ‘tremendous app’
Cathie Wooden, chief government officer and chief funding officer, Ark Make investments, gestures as she speaks through the Bitcoin 2022 Convention at Miami Seaside Conference Middle on April 7, 2022 in Miami, Florida.
Marco Bello | Getty Pictures
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 fascinated by 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 usually in China for issues like on the spot messaging, social media and funds.
WeChat has been touted because the archetype of a phenomenon often called “tremendous apps.” These apps act as all-in-one platforms that serve a spread of person wants spanning on the spot 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 every thing app.”
“Keep in mind [Musk] began within the funds trade … he bought his firm to PayPal,” Wooden mentioned. “He and [Twitter co-founder] Jack Dorsey working collectively, I feel, may flip this into a brilliant app.”
Twitter may 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 net 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’ll get this finished.”
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] actually believes in vertical integration,” she mentioned, including Twitter “can be an impressive vertical integration.”
“He already has designed and is manufacturing the final word cell gadget, the web on wheels — it is referred to as Tesla vehicles,” she added.
Nonetheless, Musk’s takeover of the agency is the topic of serious scrutiny by regulators and civil rights activists who worry he could permit dangerous content material to proliferate.
Addressing these issues, Wooden mentioned the “darkness” of Twitter was in its “opacity” round content material moderation choices. “We did not see the algorithms and the way they have been working,” she mentioned.
She added she thinks Musk may flip Twitter into open-source software program, the place the code will be reviewed, modified and shared by the general public.
