Claim:

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk said, "I am officially buying McDonald's."

A rumor claiming tech entrepreneur Elon Musk said he planned to buy the McDonald's fast food restaurant chain circulated widely online in late 2024. Musk purportedly said, "I am officially buying McDonald's."

For example, on Oct. 15, 2024, an owner of the YouTube channel Voyager posted a video titled (archived), "Elon Musk: 'I am officially buying McDonalds.'" The clip received over 273,000 views and displayed a thumbnail image supposedly showing Musk and McDonald's employees.

The video's description read, "Today, we are diving into a groundbreaking story that's left the entire world in shock. Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur behind companies like Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and Twitter, has just made an announcement that nobody saw coming: he is officially buying McDonald's."

On Oct. 28, a TikTok user shared the same rumor in a different video earning more than 355,000 views (archived). A Facebook user later reposted the same clip.

In a third example of users sharing the rumor saying Musk bought McDonald's, on Nov. 2, an owner of the YouTube channel Elon Musk Rewind posted the same claim in yet another video featuring a thumbnail image different from the one shared in the aforementioned YouTube video (archived).