The value of X, formerly known as Twitter, has tanked since Elon Musk’s 2022 takeover—and investors are not happy.
The billionaire purchased the social media behemoth for $44 billion, with the help of massive bank loans. But after Musk introduced his radical changes to the site—which included laying off 75 percent of its employees, crippling the site’s verification system, and changing the algorithm to promote more advertisements, irrelevant content, and antisemitism—interest in the company has plummeted. In the CEO’s own words, the company has lost 90 percent of its value since Musk bought it out.
“Elon’s done a tremendous amount of wealth destruction since he’s purchased Twitter,” longtime Tesla bull Ross Gerber told The Washington Post. Gerber reportedly has invested less than $1 million in the company but now considers the stake worthless.
“For the people who put capital into [Elon] for any amount,” Gerber told the Post, “trying to explain to people how he lost” so much money “is not a fun conversation.”
Gerber has also given Musk a six-month deadline to fix Tesla’s stock performance, or else he intends to exit his position. Gerber told Business Insider Sunday that he receives daily calls from clients asking him to pull out from the electric vehicle company, in which he holds $60 million shares, citing Musk’s erratic behavior on social media.
Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s founder, remains one of the platform’s largest investors. But even Dorsey has lost an estimated $720 million, according to the Post. Last year, Dorsey posted on the Twitter competitor BlueSky that he didn’t believe Musk should have purchased the site.
“It all went south,” Dorsey said, referring to the acquisition.
But not all of Musk’s investors are upset. Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who has invested the most in X after Musk himself, with nearly $2 billion rolled into the company, told the Post that he’s still very happy with his investment and felt that there was “no devaluation whatsoever.”
“When you evaluate X, you have to evaluate their ownership in xAI of 25 percent,” Alwaleed said, noting that a renewed focus for the company needs to involve bringing back major advertisers to the platform. “Clearly, the game right now is monetization, having advertisers coming to X.”
Unfortunately for Alwaleed, advertisers have made it clear that they can’t exit the platform fast enough. In response, Musk sued a group of advertisers last month to essentially bully them back onto X, a surefire way to make business connections.
