In 2022, Elon Musk placed a bid of almost $44 billion to acquire Twitter, which he then tried to worm out of. With his back against the wall after a brief skirmish in the courts, Musk chose to honor his original purchase agreement and take over the platform.
Flash forward to the present day, and X-formerly-Twitter has lost upward of 79 percent of its original value after neo-Nazis flocked to the platform and big-name advertisers fled in droves.
Now, in a somewhat rare move for the richest man on Earth, Musk has taken to beg investors for more funds at a valuation of at least $44 billion, according to reporting by Bloomberg. That's the same price Musk acquired it for nearly two years ago — a pretty bold move, to say the least.
Needless to say, at this price, Musk's valuation far exceeds the company's estimated value, which was $9.4 billion as of 2024, according to Fidelity Investments. By all accounts, the billionaire's tenure over the platform has been a financial disaster, incurring a debt of $13 billion at its peak. Investors peeking into X's books have also noticed the company lost about $1 billion in cash since Musk acquired it in 2022.
Insiders who spoke to Bloomberg indicated that this fundraiser would help the company pay off its remaining debt of $1 billion, among other smaller projects. These include Musk's much-ridiculed promise to turn X into a combination banking, dating, and video platform, or, as he calls it, "the Everything App".
It's not clear why Musk — currently worth almost $400 billion — doesn't finance the sum himself, though he could be trying to stimy the losses to his fortune since he took up the DOGE mantle. So far in 2025, Musk's total net worth has plummeted by nearly $90 billion, owing mostly to a major slump in Tesla sales since December 2024.
Though X's value might currently be in the toilet, Musk's fundraising comes after some optimistic Wall Street banks decided to start offloading the company's debt to creditors. The debt buyers are seemingly encouraged by Musk's close ties to president Donald Trump, as well as the cash flowing into Musk's artificial intelligence project, xAI.
The bank move might look like a short-term boost to X, but it doesn't do much to change the platform's operations, which continue to struggle. Just take it from Musk himself: In a leaked email from late January, the mogul told X employees that "our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even."
With that in mind, it might be no wonder he picked this tiny break in the clouds to re-up on debt before the sky darkens yet again and sours investors on X for good.
More on Musk's business moves: Elon Musk Is Shamelessly Firing Government Workers Who Were Investigating His Companies
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