A court order recently forced Elon Musk’s X to reveal its full list of shareholders, as of June 2023, to the public.
Many of the recognizable tech industry names had already been reported as backers of Musk’s effort to buy the social media company then known as Twitter and take it private, inculding VC firms Andreessen Horowitz, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Sequoia Capital, as well as Oracle founder Larry Ellison and crypto company Binance.
One name that hadn’t previously been reported was the rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs, who is apparently an investor through Sean Combs Capital. Bill Ackman, the activist investor who recently made headlines with his campaign against activism at Ivy League schools, is also a shareholder through the Pershing Square Foundation. So is 8VC, the VC firm co-founded by Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale, which has reported ties to Russian oligarchs.
Some of the listed shareholders were investors in Twitter before Musk’s takeover. For example, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud reportedly rolled over their Twitter shares into stakes into what’s now X.
The court filing containing the list of shareholders is dated June 9, 2023, but it was unsealed this week in response to a motion from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press on behalf of independent journalist Jacob Silverman.
In a blog post publishing the full list of investors, Silverman acknowledged that many of Musk’s backers were already known, and that the list doesn’t include ownership amounts. Still, he said it’s “a great starting point for journalists, researchers, regulators, activists, and anyone else who wants to know what’s going on behind the scenes of this important company.”