X logo officially replaces Twitter’s famous bird on mobile app

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2 years ago

July 29, 2023

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This illustration photo taken on July 24, 2023 shows the Twitter bird logo upside down in the background of Elon Musk’s screen advertising an “X” as a replacement logo, in Los Angeles.

Chris Delmas | AFP | Getty Images

X, formerly known as Twitter, has officially retired its famous blue and white bird logo.

The icon on the mobile app changed to an “X” late Friday night in the latest phase of a sweeping rebrand the platform’s owner Elon Musk announced earlier this month. The company previously introduced the logo on the web and launched the domain X.com, though Twitter.com also remains live.

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Musk, who acquired the platform for $44 billion late last year, wrote in a post Sunday that the company would soon “bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.” The transition from Twitter to X reflects Musk’s vision to turn the platform into what he has called an “everything app.”

He shared a video of a new X logo glowing on top of the company’s headquarters early Saturday. City officials in San Francisco opened a complaint against the company Friday for allegedly installing the sign without a proper permit, according to The Associated Press.

The Tesla CEO has long been enamored with the letter “x.” SpaceX, Musk’s rocket manufacturer, also features an X as its logo, and Musk recently launched a new artificial intelligence startup called xAI, with the lofty goal to “understand the true nature of the universe.”

But undoing years of branding behind Twitter’s blue bird is a move that business analysts consider risky. The company has already struggled to retain advertisers as Musk’s changes to the site have led some to fear it’s not a safe place for brands to market.

Musk recently hired former NBCUniversal advertising executive Linda Yaccarino as CEO, seen as a move to help reassure advertisers.

In an email to employees Monday obtained by CNBC’s Sara Eisen, Yaccarino wrote that X will develop experiences in video, audio, messaging, banking and payments that will “delight” users. She added that she and Musk plan to work across every team to keep the “entire community up to date.”

“Time to update.,” Yaccarino wrote in a post about the mobile app’s logo change Friday.

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.

Technology

Apple silences its critics with strong iPhone demand and blowout services revenue

Published

5 hours ago

October 31, 2025

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Apple silences its critics with strong iPhone demand and blowout services revenue

Technology

SpaceX and Blue Origin both submitted plans to get astronauts back to the moon faster, NASA says

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5 hours ago

October 31, 2025

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SpaceX and Blue Origin both submitted plans to get astronauts back to the moon faster, NASA says

SpaceX’s Starship rocket 38 launches during the 11th test flight on October 13, 2025 as seen from South Padre Island in Texas.

Gabriel V. Cardenas | Afp | Getty Images

SpaceX said it has pitched NASA a “simplified mission” to put astronauts back on the moon following criticisms over delays by Sean Duffy, the space agency’s acting administrator.

In a company blog post out Thursday, Elon Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor said: “We’ve shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the Moon while simultaneously improving crew safety.”

Earlier this month, Duffy said in an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, that SpaceX was behind schedule on building its lunar landing system for NASA’s Artemis III mission and that the agency would reopen the landing contract for that mission to competitors such as Jeff Bezos‘ rocket maker Blue Origin.

A NASA spokesperson in an email to CNBC said that the agency “has received and is evaluating plans from both SpaceX and Blue Origin for acceleration of HLS production.”

“Following the shutdown, the agency will issue an RFI to the broader aerospace industry for their proposals,” the spokesperson said. “A committee of NASA subject matter experts is being assembled to evaluate each proposal and determine the best path forward to win the second space race given the urgency of adversarial threats to peace and transparency on the Moon.”

NASA had previously said that SpaceX and Blue Origin would have until Oct. 29th to propose new ways to speed up the project.

Musk initially responded to Duffy by posting to his social network X, “Sean Dummy is trying to kill NASA!” In another post, Musk wrote: “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.”

SpaceX’s massive Starship has flown 11 test flights so far, uncrewed. The last two flights were deemed successful, but the company has not yet shown all the in-orbit refueling capabilities it requires before embarking on the Artemis III, manned lunar mission.

Blue Origin has been developing a lunar lander for NASA and has received about $835 million from the space agency since their contract began in 2023. The company plans to launch a smaller scale version of their lander, known as Blue Moon Mark 1.

Meanwhile, China is aiming to land its astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade.

In September, in an all-hands meetings with NASA employees, Duffy told his staff that he was irked by “shade thrown” on the space agency at a Senate hearing in which some attendees doubted that the U.S. could put astronauts back on the Moon before China could land its astronauts there.

Besides its lunar mission, China also announced it is sending a new crew to its orbiting lab, the Tiangong space station, this week. China built this space station after it was excluded from access to the International Space Station due to U.S. national security concerns.

SpaceX is paid when it achieves different milestones under its NASA contract for the HLS (human landing system integrated lander).

According to USA Spending, which tracks federal contracts, NASA has already paid approximately $2.7 billion to SpaceX for the “design, development, manufacture, test, launch, demonstration and engineering support” of the HLS. The agency is obligated to pay around another $300 million for milestones SpaceX achieved, and Musk’s company stands to earn a total of $4.5 billion (or another $1.5 billion) from the HLS contract if they achieve all milestones.

SpaceX today said, in their company blog post, that they “self-funded” 90% or more of the program, which would imply they have spent over $30 billion already.

As CNBC previously reported, some NASA employees have been required to work without pay for the space agency during the federal government shutdown if their jobs support Artemis missions.

SpaceX and Blue Origin did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

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Apple isn’t playing the same AI capex game as the rest of the megacaps

Published

6 hours ago

October 30, 2025

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Apple isn't playing the same AI capex game as the rest of the megacaps

While many of the largest tech companies race to build massive data centers for their artificial intelligence ambitions, Apple is taking a more modest approach.

Instead of simply buying as many AI chips as possible, Apple buys computing capacity from outside partners, finance chief Kevan Parekh explained Thursday on the company’s fourth quarter earnings call.

When Apple does build servers for its AI software, the company is using its own chips — not those from Nvidia or AMD — to power a service it calls Private Cloud Compute.

“I don’t see us moving away from this hybrid model, where we leverage both first-party capacity as well as leverage third-party capacity,” Parekh said.

Apple’s results on Thursday closed out a busy week of earnings for the tech industry. Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta reported on Wednesday, while Amazon reported on Thursday.

All of the companies said they planned to boost spending on capital expenditures to secure the computing capacity needed to develop next-generation AI and serve users.

Alphabet said it expects to spend about $92 billion on capital expenditures this year. Microsoft said it spent about $34.9 billion on capex during the September quarter and will spend more in capex for its fiscal 2026 than it did the year prior.

Meta stock got whacked after CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the company’s plan to spend about $71 billion on AI chips and other expenses in 2025. On Thursday, Amazon raised its 2025 spending forecast 6% to $125 billion.

Compared to them, Apple’s barely spending at all.

In its fiscal 2025, which ended in September, Apple spent $12.72 billion on capital expenditures.

And yet, that’s up 35% from what it spent last year, a significant increase. Parekh said Apple is expecting further increases. Analysts expect Apple’s capex to increase to $14.3 billion this year, according to FactSet.

“In ’25 we did have capex costs associated with building out our Private Cloud Compute environment in our first party data centers,” Parekh said. Earlier this month, Apple announced that it was starting to ship those servers from a factory in Houston.

Last year, the company released Apple Intelligence, a suite of AI tools that runs on the company’s chips that can summarize notifications, generate images like new emojis, and pass complicated queries to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Apple Intelligence has received mixed reviews from critics, and one of its centerpieces, an improved Siri assistant, was delayed by the company in May until 2026. The improved Siri is on track to come out next year, Apple said Thursday.

But if Apple’s decision to take a different approach to AI puts the company’s hardware sales at risk, it hasn’t happened yet.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC’s Steve Kovach that the consumer response to the company’s iPhone 17 models was “off the chart,” and the company said that overall sales would rise between 10% and 12% in the company’s December quarter. Apple executives were effusive on a call with analysts about the new iPhone’s popularity.

Still, Apple executives are aware that that AI features like Apple Intelligence are a factor in smartphone purchasing decisions.

“We’re very bullish on it becoming a greater factor,” Cook said.

Apple’s “hybrid” approach means that some of what the company spends on compute for AI ends up as an operating expense, instead of a capital expense. Analysts pressed Apple executives that the company’s operating expenses rose 11% in the past year to $15.91 billion.

“We are increasing our investments in AI, while also continuing to invest in our product roadmap,” Parekh said. “The vast majority of the increase to our operating expenses are driven by R&D.”

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