Is Elon Musk Buying Onlyfans? Here's Why the Fake Claim Is Trending Again

A screenshot with no source, a fabricated quote, and a grieving family's statement were all it took to convince millions that Elon Musk was about to buy OnlyFans.

The claim has resurfaced across social media platforms, recirculating a hoax that first went viral in March 2026. It traces back to a single post from the parody account @DailyNoud, which has no connection to Musk, X, or OnlyFans. There is no press release, court filing, regulatory disclosure, or verified statement from Musk supporting the claim. It is fabricated.

Where the Fake Quote Came From

The rumour began on 23 March 2026, when @DailyNoud posted: 'BREAKING: Elon Musk has expressed interest in purchasing OnlyFans and shutting down the company: "Yeah, I'll do it. I don't see why not."' The post was shared on X by Daily Noud on 23 March 2026.

The account is a known satirical profile with a history of inventing quotes attributed to public figures, a detail that its parody label makes clear but that gets stripped away once a post is cropped into a screenshot and reshared. Once the quote was cropped and reshared as an image, the parody context was lost entirely.

Fact-checkers moved quickly. One X account, Fact Of X, posted directly: the viral claim that Elon Musk wants to buy OnlyFans and shut it down is fabricated, originating from the parody account @DailyNoud, and Musk never made the quoted remark or showed any such interest. Italian outlet Open reached the same conclusion after checking Musk's official X account and searching for any corroborating wire report or interview, finding none.

A Death That Gave the Hoax Its Legs

Radvinsky bought the platform's parent company from founders Guy and Tim Stokely in 2018. Under his ownership, OnlyFans grew from roughly 350,000 content creators in 2019 to 4.6 million by 2024, and he was worth an estimated £3.7bn ($4.7bn) at the time of his death, according to Forbes.

Radvinsky's death fed a second, separate false rumour: that his passing had somehow paved the way for a Musk takeover. In fact, real merger talks were already under way months earlier and had nothing to do with Musk. Architect Capital entered exclusive talks in January to acquire a 60 per cent stake in OnlyFans, in a deal reported by Axios to value the company's equity at roughly £2.8bn ($3.5bn) with about £1.6bn ($2bn) in debt, for a total enterprise value of around £4.3bn ($5.5bn). An earlier Variety report from 2025 had cited a preliminary figure of £6.3bn ($8bn). Neither figure involved Musk.

Why the Numbers Don't Add Up — and Musk's Actual OnlyFans History

OnlyFans is not a struggling asset in need of rescue. The company generated £5.7bn ($7.22bn) in gross revenue in the 2024 financial year and a pre-tax profit of roughly £540m ($684m). A buyer paying an inflated premium purely to shut the platform down would be destroying roughly £540m ($684m) in annual profit for ideological reasons alone, a decision unlike anything in Musk's documented acquisition record.

Musk does have a genuine, if unrelated, history with OnlyFans. In the month before the hoax spread, a federal judge in Texas dismissed a lawsuit brought by an OnlyFans creator who had accused X and Musk of violating federal law over the nonconsensual sharing of explicit images. That case, however, involved content moderation on X, not any acquisition plan.

The rumour also spawned a Polymarket betting event asking whether Musk would announce a deal for OnlyFans by mid-2026. As the fact-checking settled, the prediction market priced the probability at just 4 per cent, close to statistical noise rather than genuine expectation. Neither Musk nor OnlyFans has issued any statement to the contrary, and the platform has continued to operate under its existing ownership structure since Radvinsky's death.

The internet keeps resurrecting a quote Elon Musk never said, but the receipts, a parody account, a dismissed lawsuit, and a genuine sale process worth billions that has nothing to do with him tell a different story entirely.