Elon Musk purchased X, formerly known as Twitter, in October 2022 for $44 billion. Since then, its value has plunged 71.5%.
In late 2023, a leaked memo from the social media platform showed that X valued itself at less than half its initial value—just $19 billion. Around the same time, Fidelity, the mutual fund giant that helped Musk purchase X, marked down the value of its shares in the privately-held company even more, putting its value somewhere between $15 and $16 billion.
According to a new disclosure obtained by Axios, Fidelity has written down its shares yet again—implying that as of November 2023, X is worth just $12.5 billion. The valuation includes a steep 10.7% drop in November.
Elon Musk’s ownership of X has been plagued with problems, albeit of his own making. Big-name advertisers such as Walmart, IBM, and NBCUniversal left the site over concerns about hate speech on the platform to which Musk responded by telling them to “go f*ck [themselves]” during an interview with the New York Times. Musk himself has come under fire for endorsing an antisemitic post in November.
Equally controversial was Musk’s reinstatement of formerly-suspended accounts, including those of of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who repeatedly alleged on the platform that 2012's Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax; former president Donald Trump, who was banned for encouraging the Jan. 6th attack on the US Capitol in 2021; rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, who was twice suspended for antisemitic posts last year; and far-right US congressional representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was dropped by the platform after violating its covid-19 misinformation policies in 2021 and 2022.