Key Highlights

  • Thomas Hayes, chairman of Great Hill Capital, publicly argued that Mark Zuckerberg should pay around USD 90 billion for PayPal Holdings , a premium to where shares were trading before the speculation began.
  • Hayes framed the potential Acquisition as a way for Meta Platforms to save an estimated 5 to 10 years of internal development time in building a WeChat style all-in-one super-app.
  • The argument was explicitly framed against a competitive clock, with Hayes pointing to Elon Musk's Xmoney payments push inside X as the rival platform Meta would be racing against.
  • Hayes's view is his own Investment thesis and public commentary, not a report of actual Merger talks between Meta and PayPal, and neither company has confirmed any negotiation at the USD 90 billion level or any other price.

The Case Hayes Is Making

Thomas Hayes built his argument around a simple efficiency calculation: rather than spending years and untold engineering resources building payments, messaging, and commerce infrastructure from scratch, Meta Platforms could buy an established, trusted payments rail in PayPal and bolt it onto its existing user base of billions across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Hayes has pointed to the recent PayPal and Meta commerce partnership, which lets shoppers check out using Meta's Muse AI agents, as early proof that the two companies' technology stacks already interoperate. In his framing, a USD 90 billion price tag looks expensive on a standalone basis but cheap relative to the multi-year, uncertain path of building comparable payments trust and merchant relationships organically, especially with competitors moving quickly in the same direction.

The Xmoney Angle That Raises the Stakes

Central to the Hayes thesis is competitive urgency. Elon Musk has been pushing Xmoney as a payments and financial services layer inside X, part of a broader ambition to turn the platform into an American equivalent of China's WeChat, where messaging, payments, commerce, and Social Media all live in one app. Hayes argues that if Musk gets there first with Xmoney, Meta risks being permanently boxed out of owning the payments layer of its own massive social graph, forcing users toward a rival ecosystem for transactions even while they stay on Meta's apps for everything else. That scenario, in Hayes's view, is what makes paying a premium for PayPal now more rational than waiting to see how the super-app race plays out organically over the next several years.

Why This Remains an Opinion, Not a Deal

It is important to separate Hayes's public argument from confirmed corporate activity. Great Hill Capital is a hedge fund, and Hayes has a track record of publicly floating M&A theses on financial media, which is distinct from having insight into actual boardroom discussions at Meta Platforms or PayPal Holdings. Neither company has acknowledged a USD 90 billion figure, a formal offer, or ongoing negotiations tied specifically to this framework. Regulatory hurdles would also be significant for a deal of this size, given both companies' scale and the antitrust scrutiny Meta already faces. Investors reading about the Hayes thesis should treat it as one informed market participant's strategic argument for why a deal could make sense, not as evidence that Zuckerberg has agreed to, or even seriously considered, that specific price.

Where Things Stand

Where things stand: Thomas Hayes's USD 90 billion Meta-PayPal framework is a public investment thesis, not a confirmed transaction. His argument rests on the idea that acquiring PayPal Holdings could save Meta Platforms 5 to 10 years in building a WeChat style super-app, particularly with Elon Musk's Xmoney advancing inside X as a competing payments and social platform. Neither Meta nor PayPal has confirmed talks at this price or any price, and Hayes's commentary should be read as strategic analysis rather than reporting on an actual deal in progress. The thesis does, however, help explain why PayPal shares have been so sensitive to Takeover chatter in recent sessions.