Elon Musk’s X is worth nearly 80% less than what he paid for the social platform, previously known as Twitter, when he bought it two years ago, according to new estimates from Fidelity.
The financial services company, in its annual Blue Chip Growth Fund report on Saturday, valued X at 78.7% less than the $44 billion he paid for the company in October 2022. That would make X worth $9.4 billion today.
Fidelity, according to its report, made a $19.66 million investment into X right before Musk bought the company. At the end of August 2024, Fidelity’s estimated its investment was now worth $4.2 million.
Because its now a private company under Musk’s stewardship, X doesn’t report its financial performance. The company in July said there were 570 million monthly X users, up 6% year-over-year.
In the U.S., X had 73.5 million monthly users, according to data from Similarweb shared with CNN — down 20% from when he bought the company.
Musk himself said he was “obviously overpaying” for X right before the deal closed in 2022. But he said the “long-term potential for Twitter in my view is an order of magnitude greater than its current value.”
The SpaceX and Tesla head honcho said he bought Twitter because it had become overly censorious under the previous leadership of Jack Dorsey.
Last month, X released its first Global Transparency Report since Musk took over. Suspensions on the platform had quadrupled under Musk, the report said, due in large part to taking more action against users who violate its “Child Safety” policy.
At the same time, X is censoring far less content and accounts for violating its “hateful content” policy than it did pre-Musk ownership. During the first half of 2024, X suspended 2,361 accounts for violating the policy — which is 97.7% less than it did compared to 2021, when the company was still being run by Dorsey.
Even with X’s big valuation drop, Musk is doing fine. Forbes has him ranked as the world’s richest man, with a net worth of $259.9 billion, on Wednesday.
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