Did billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk offer women's basketball star Caitlin Clark a $10 million endorsement deal? No, that's not true: This comes from a website that publishes fake stories about famous people. The site describes itself as satire, and the original article was clearly labeled as satire.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on June 18, 2024. The caption on the photo read:
Elon Musk Backs Caitlin Clark, Offers $10 Million Endorsement: 'I Support You, Caitlin Clark'
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Oct 22 14:13:13 2024 UTC)
The first comment on the post featured a link to the original article (archived here) about Musk's purported generosity toward Clark. That article, published on June 18, 2024, appeared on a website called Esspots. The first topic tag below the headline read "SATIRE." This is what the tag, highlighted in red by Lead Stories, looked like: 
(Source: Esspots screenshot taken on Tue Oct 22 20:41:00 2024 UTC)
On its About Us page (archived here), Esspots explicitly tells readers not to take its stories seriously:
Welcome to the US page of Esspots (A Subsidiary of SpaceXMania.com specializing in Satire and Parody News), your one-stop destination for satirical news and commentary about the United States of America. Our team of writers and editors is dedicated to bringing you the latest and greatest in fake news and absurdity, all with a healthy dose of humor and satire.
Nonetheless, several social media users have reposted or rehashed Esspots' claim in the weeks and months following the original article, without noting its satirical label -- for example, here, here, here and here.
The repetitive nature of Esspots' writing aroused Lead Stories' suspicions that it may be a product of artificial intelligence (AI). Lead Stories ran the piece through Hive Moderation, an online AI-detection tool, which found it was 99.9 percent "likely to contain AI Generated Text."
(Source: Hive Moderation screenshot taken on Tue Oct 22 15:21:14 2024 UTC)
The Esspots article said Musk had announced his offer on Twitter, now known as X, of which he is a major co-owner (archived here). Lead Stories did an advanced search of the billionaire's X account on October 22, 2024, and found no mention of Clark's name.
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue Oct 22 16:05:11 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories also conducted a keyword search on Google to look for any other evidence that Musk had offered Clark an endorsement deal (archived here). The results yielded nothing to support the claim's authenticity. The search did turn up copies of the claim on other social media platforms, as well as other fact checks debunking it.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on false claims involving Elon Musk can be found here. Our fact checks of claims about Caitlin Clark are here.
More fact checks on false claims involving Esspots can be found here.
