No, Elon Musk Did Not Buy Boeing in Late 2024

Claim:

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk bought Boeing in late 2024.

Rating:

A rumor circulating online in the latter weeks of 2024 claimed tech entrepreneur Elon Musk bought the Boeing aerospace company. Musk serves as CEO of SpaceX, a space-technology company, and Tesla, an electric vehicle manufacturer. He also owns the social media platform X.

For example, on Nov. 1, a user managing the Elon Musk Vault YouTube channel posted a video titled, “Elon Musk JUST Bought Boeing & DESTROYS All Competition!” The clip’s description said its content examined “what the acquisition may imply for Boeing, SpaceX and the global aerospace sector.” Other YouTube users’ channels later shared the same rumor in new videos.

Some users submitted comments indicating they believed the rumor. One person commenting under a video promoting the rumor remarked, “Musk is a game changer…  a wonderful human being, a true American leader and genius.” Another user said, “That is a great move for Musk.” Further, some users mentioned that the purported news inspired them to look into buying Boeing stock.

However, the rumor Musk bought Boeing was false. The videos presenting the rumor were simply the latest examples in a long line of false rumors claiming Musk announced purchases of other big companies, including McDonald’s, Ford and others. Most of the videos spreading these rumors displayed signs of artificial intelligence (AI), including generating elements for audio narration, editing, visuals selection and scripting.

As of Dec. 20, the link for the video on the Elon Musk Vault YouTube channel displayed the message, “This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.” We looked for remnants of the clip on Bing, Google and Yahoo. We only located remaining traces of the video in Yahoo search results.

The removal of the channel followed that of the similar Elon Musk Rewind channel, which we noted in our past story fact-checking the false claim of Musk buying Amazon.

Sources