Crypto, AI Heavyweights Backed Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover

X, formerly known as Twitter, has released a list of its previously undisclosed shareholders, revealing the role several crypto-focused firms played in Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of the social media platform in 2022. 

The company’s shareholder list was made public on Wednesday to comply with a legal order. The document, which names nearly 100 entities, includes Binance Capital Management and several prominent venture capital firms with AI and crypto-focused investments. These include Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), ARK Venture, and 8VC.

A16z’s portfolio includes leading crypto exchange Coinbase and crypto bank Anchorage Digital, while ARK Invest has holdings in stock and crypto trading platform Robinhood and AI developer Anthropic. Meanwhile, AI firms such as PathAI and Cognition are part of 8VC’s portfolio.

The shareholder list also includes nearly 30 entities linked to Fidelity, which has a digital assets arm.

X did not immediately reply to a request for comment from Decrypt.

While Binance was previously revealed to be an investor in X, most of the firm’s other shareholders have remained unknown to the public until now.

A federal judge forced X to release the shareholder list on Tuesday. The judge’s order is a response to a motion filed by the nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in July, that requested the unsealing of a list of X’s shareholders compiled as part of a separate 2023 legal case against the firm.  

Musk acquired X for $44 billion in October 2022, marking one of the largest tech acquisitions in history. 

The billionaire committed to putting up $46.5 billion in equity and debt financing for the deal and its closing costs, while banks such as Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp. pledged $13 billion in debt financing, Reuters reported.

However, that deal hasn’t panned out as well as those backing it hoped it would, according to a new financial data analysis.

Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter has become the worst merger-finance deal for banks since the 2008-2009 financial crisis, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. That’s partially because the deal has run up $13 billion in “hung debt,” which is a kind of debt that a bank cannot easily unload without incurring a loss.

X has been on rocky financial footing since 2022, as major companies pulled back on advertising on the social media platform in a bid to distance themselves from its owner. Musk has long courted criticism for making public remarks that his detractors say are anti-semitic, ableist, and politically charged. 

Prior to Musk’s takeover, advertisers’ dollars accounted for nearly 90% of X’s revenue, according to the New York Times. Earlier this month, Musk filed a lawsuit over an alleged advertising boycott of X.