Nearly two years after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, now X, for $44 billion, the official list of investors who took part in the October 2022 deal has finally been revealed. Shareholders include the likes of investor Bill Ackman, hip-hop figure Sean Combs and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, according to a recently unsealed document that was first reported by The Washington Post.
The list of stakeholders backing Musk’s purchase was initially filed by X in 2023 as part of a lawsuit filed by former employees requesting the payment of arbitration fees from their employer. The document was unsealed on Aug. 20 following a motion from the Reports Committee for Freedom of the Press, a nonprofit that provides legal resources to journalists, to make the records public on behalf of independent reporter Jacob Silverman.
The nearly 100 stakeholders listed on the document include a number of venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, which both recently participated in a $6 billion funding round for Musk’s A.I. startup xAI. The firm 8VC, led by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, also helped Musk with his X acquisition and is additionally a backer of Musk’s tunneling venture The Boring Company. Gigafund, another Boring Company investor, invested in X too; as did Scott Nolan, a former SpaceX engineer who is a now a partner at Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm Founders Fund.
Some of the list’s inclusions aren’t all that surprising. The cryptocurrency exchange Binance, for example, had previously revealed that it invested $500 million in 2022 for Musk’s takeover. And it’s no shock that investor Cathie Wood, a longtime Musk fan, was involved in the acquisition through a subsidiary of her Ark Venture Fund.
Musk himself, too, was named in the document under the Elon Musk Revocable Trust. Despite having previously engaged in public clashes with Musk over his vision for the social media platform, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey also aided the 2022 purchase under an entity named Jack Dorsey Remainder LLC.
Other prominent names officially revealed as X stakeholders include Bill Ackman, whose Pershing Square Foundation—a private foundation associated with his hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management—was included among the list. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, a former board member at Musk’s Tesla, is an X investor; as is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, another backer of xAI. Sean Combs Capital, a fund linked with rapper Sean Combs, was also named in the unsealed document.
Was X a good investment?
Almost 30 entities on the document are connected to the mutual fund manager Fidelity Investments. The asset manager recently revealed that its investment in X has resulted in losses, disclosing in a November portfolio update that its stake in the social media platform was valued at $5.6 million—a 72 percent decrease from its value in Oct. 2022.
Despite introducing features that charge users for verification and use of its A.I. chatbot Grok, X still primarily relies on ad revenue for income. But Musk’s loosening of content moderation policies has continued to spook advertisers, with the platform reportedly seeing a 24 percent decrease in ad revenue for the first half of 2024 at $744 million, compared to $982 million in the first six months of 2023.
Earlier this month, X sued the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, an advertising industry coalition, for allegedly impacting X’s revenue by influencing brands to take part in an ad boycott on the platform. The group has since shut down, stating that while it denies Musk’s claims, it doesn’t have the financial resources to fight his legal claims and continue operating.
