#elon musk
The world if governments start to arrest each other's billionaires for the many, many laws that they or their businesses break.
(article transcribed below)
When Elon Musk bought Twitter and renamed it X, he didn’t do it alone. Though the billionaire tapped his vast wealth to cover the lion’s share of the $44 billion purchase price in 2022, he also relied on bank loans and a long list of investors, the full extent of which was only recently revealed.
At the time, analysts marveled at Musk’s ability to attract dozens of enthusiastic partners. Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who rolled nearly $2 billion in Twitter stock held by himself and a Saudi holding company into the private deal, tweeted at Musk: “I believe you will be an excellent leader for @Twitter to propel & maximise its great potential.”
Two years later, Alwaleed says he is still happy with his investment. But to others, the deal looks significantly less appealing. Under Musk, X’s valuation has cratered — as Musk has acknowledged — leaving it worth as little as half of what he paid.
Since late last year, Fidelity has consistently valued the X stake in one of its funds 70 percent below the purchase price, a drop in valuation first reported by Axios. Figures released Friday show that Fidelity now values that stake about 72 percent lower than when Musk took over X, taking its overall portion of the company from a valuation of around $316 million to $88 million.
Based on a Washington Post analysis using Fidelity’s estimates, the eight largest initial investments that were reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or otherwise publicly disclosed are worth about $5 billion less than when Musk bought X. His and his partners’ overall stake has shed $24 billion in value — a vaporization of wealth that has little parallel outside the realm of economic or industry-specific crashes, or devastating corporate scandals.
All but the second-largest investor declined or did not respond to a request for comment for this article. Fidelity declined to comment. Musk and X did not respond to requests for comment.
Among those shouldering the burden: Saudi and Qatari business leaders and royalty; Silicon Valley venture capital and tech investors; and Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey. Musk took out loans to cover the rest of the deal, borrowing more than $12 billion that banks have not been able to offload, news outlets have reported.
“Elon’s done a tremendous amount of wealth destruction since he’s purchased Twitter,” said Ross Gerber, who said he invested less than $1 million, a stake he now considers worthless.
“For the people who put capital into him for any amount,” Gerber said, “ … trying to explain to people how he lost” so much money “is not a fun conversation.”
Among top investors, Dorsey — whose stake has lost an estimated $720 million — has made his displeasure known. Last year, he said Musk shouldn’t have purchased Twitter after all, posting on social media that he didn’t think Musk “acted right after realizing his timing was bad.”
“It all went south,” Dorsey said.
But Alwaleed, X’s biggest investor after Musk himself, said in an interview with The Post that he values his and Kingdom Holding Co.’s X stake the same as when Musk took over the site: $1.9 billion, a figure he said was a “conservative” estimate.
“In our books, on my books personally, we are valuing at minimum [at] the entry level that we entered with,” he said last week. “There’s no devaluation whatsoever.”
The largest investors — those with stakes of $250 million or more — received the right to confidential business information as part of the deal, prompting concerns in Washington about the involvement of entities associated with foreign governments and their potential access to user data. Alwaleed said he received no concessions or formal influence as part of his agreement to invest, calling his motives purely financial. A spokesperson said Alwaleed and Kingdom Holding Co., which the prince chairs, receive the same set of business information available to other X and xAI investors.
Alwaleed, who said he and his team are in frequent contact with Musk, X CEO Linda Yaccarino and Jared Birchall, head of Musk’s family office, said outside valuations that suggest massive losses do not take into account X’s bets through xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence start-up. Alwaleed and Kingdom Holding Co. have become one of xAI’s largest investors.
“When you evaluate X, you have to evaluate their ownership in xAI of 25 percent,” Alwaleed said. He also said X needs to prioritize revenue. “Clearly, the game right now is monetization, having advertisers coming to X.”
As a major shareholder in Twitter, Alwaleed initially opposed Musk’s purchase — not because he was “against Musk,” he said, but because he thought Musk’s offer of $54.20 per share was too low.
“My first call with Musk was: I was fighting to stay in the company,” he said, citing his belief that Twitter was worth more.
Because Musk turned Twitter into a private company, it’s hard to know its up-to-the-minute valuation. But some things about its financial picture are clear: Advertisers, its key source of revenue, fled after controversies — some caused by Musk himself. Some advertisers were also put off by his decision to gut content moderation while restoring thousands of accounts previously suspended for breaking the site’s rules.
The deal has also faced scrutiny. The SEC has an active fraud probe into Musk’s purchase of the site, examining his early accumulation of Twitter shares without disclosing his investment — a move that could have affected the share price. Some investors have received subpoenas as part of the probe.
Here are the largest initial investors in the deal, and what their stakes were worth when they bought in and what they’re worth today, extrapolating from Fidelity’s calculations.
Elon Musk
Investment: $33.5 billion commitment, consisting of Tesla shares and his own wealth, along with co-investors, including those listed below.
2024 value: $9.38 billion
Difference: -$24.12 Billion
Public comment, April 25, 2022: “[I] want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans,” Musk said in a news release. “Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
Musk and X did not respond to requests for comment.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal (and Kingdom Holding Co.)
Investment: $1.89 billion
2024 value: $529.2 million
Difference: -$1.36 billion
Public comments at the time:
After first publicly rejecting the offer on April 14, 2022, the prince embraced a deal May 5, 2022: “I believe [Elon Musk] will be an excellent leader for @Twitter to propel & maximise its great potential @Kingdom_KHC & I look forward to roll our ~$1.9bn in the “new” @Twitter and join you on this exciting journey.”
Alwaleed declined to disclose the specifics of his conversations with Musk leading up to his investment but said he was “fighting to stay in the company” because he believed Musk’s initial offer was too low.
“We are very happy with the alliance with Mr. Musk,” Alwaleed said, adding that he continues to see massive upside to his investment. “We categorically reject any discount to [the] company.”
Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder and former CEO
Investment: $1 billion
2024 value: $280 million
Difference: -$720 million
Public comments on April 25, 2022: “In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.”
Dorsey did not respond to a request for comment but publicly expressed regret after Musk’s purchase.
Larry Ellison, Oracle co-founder and board chairman
Investment: $1 billion
2024 value: $280 million
Difference: -$720 million
No public comments at the time.
Ellison did not respond to a request for comment.
Sequoia Capital
Investment: $800 million
2024 value: $224 million
Difference: -$576 million
No public comments at the time.
Sequoia did not respond to a request for comment.
Vy Capital
Investment: $700 million
2024 value: $196 million
Difference: -$504 million
No public comments at the time.
Vy Capital did not respond to a request for comment.
Binance
Investment: $500 million
2024 investment value: $140 million
Difference: -$360 million
Public comments, May 5, 2022: “We’re excited to be able to help Elon realize a new vision for Twitter,” said Binance’s then-CEO, Changpeng Zhao.
Binance did not respond to a request for comment.
Andreessen Horowitz
Investment: $400 million
2024 value: $112 million
Difference: -$288 million
No public comments at the time.
Horowitz did not respond to a request for comment.
Qatar Investment Authority
Investment: $375 million
2024 value: $105 million
Difference: -$270 million
No known public comments at the time.
Mansoor Bin Ebrahim Al-Mahmoud, the CEO of the Qatar Investment Authority, expressed support of Musk last year, Bloomberg News reported: “We trust his leadership in terms of turning around the company,” he said.
The Qatar Investment Authority declined to comment.
Methodology
Fidelity recently valued what was initially a $19.66 million Twitter stake in its Blue Chip Growth Fund at about 72 percent less than when Musk purchased the social media company, a valuation that has remained relatively steady. The Post applied the 72 percent drop to the initial investor stakes reported in filings to the SEC, or revealed in public comments and individual confirmations of entities’ involvement.
From illegal mining operations to an on-going coup attempt, what is happening between Twitter and Brazil?
Why was Twitter Suspended?
It started when Twitter refused to follow orders from the STF (Federal Supreme Court, headed by the minister Alexandre de Moraes) to take down accounts that spread misinformation during the 2022 elections and participated in the 2023 coup attempt (more on that later). By refusing to cooperate, Twitter infringed laws of national security and accumulated a fine equivalent to U$3,2 million.
Musk also refused to pay the fine. STF threatened to arrest the Twitter representatives in Brazil if the fine didn't get paid, which caused Musk to remove Twitter offices from Brazil. It goes without saying that having a company operating in Brazil without any legal representatives is another crime. Moraes gave Twitter 24h to elect a representative in the country, another offer that Musk refused. After this point, the suspension of Twitter was inevitable, and with it, the 20 million Brazilian users. The suspension should be lifted when Musk pays his fines and elects a company representative here. Masterful gambit, Elon.
It didn't help that Musk kept sharing epic memes comparing Alexandre de Moraes to Voldemort, and an AI generated image illustrating the Federal Judge behind bars.
Moraes suggested at some point that VPN apps should be taken out of App stores, and that anyone "caught" using a VPN to use Twitter (somehow) would be fined to an equivalent of U$8k. The measure was most likely taken to prevent big accounts - such as that of Brazilian politicians - to use the website. He later backtracked on both decisions.
All this debacle had some people talk about a supposed "judicial dictatorship". This term has a history.
Dictatorship??!!??
So, a bit of historical context.
2022 was a presidential election year in Brazil. The polls were disfavorable to Bolsonaro (the ex-military, far-right president at the time), indicating that Lula (a social democrat, ex-president from 2003-2011) had chances of winning it in the first turn. Bolsonaro's Brazilian military instincts kicked in and he summoned his ministers to plan a coup beforehand WHILE FUCKING FILMING THEMSELVES DOING IT.
The ministers were hesitant about the idea of a coup, citing mainly the lack of international support they'd have for it. A pitiful attempt at a coup was carried out in January 8th 2023, copy and pasting US' January 6th "insurrection", resulting in the partial destruction of government buildings followed by the arrest of the people who participated in it.
Suffice to say, the coup was unsuccessful.
The lesson was learned. Brazil wouldn't be able to support another military dictatorship without international support. Far-right pundits immediately started working towards building that support as soon as Lula got elected. The plan was to frame Brazil as a nation that abandoned democracy to become a left-wing dictatorship. Now every move the government did to enforce it's own laws against hate speech or punish those responsible for the coup attempt, would be denounced as an act of authoritarianism and violation of human rights.
In March this year, Eduardo Bolsonaro (one of Bolsonaro's sons and currently a congressman) lead an informal press release in front of Washington's capitol (he was barred from making a hearing inside the capitol, you see) advocating for American politicians to impose sanctions to Brazil due to it's "Judiciary dictatorship" and "violation of human rights" (read: The imprisonment of the people who trashed the congress buildings during the "coup attempt")
Here's Paulo Figueiredo, vlogger, and the grandson of a Brazilian military dictator, on PragerU spewing out the bullshit that Lula's election was illegitimate. The constant parallels he makes between Brazil and US, as well as the repetition of the mantra at the end "here, like in Brazil" make it a naked attempt to gather sympathy from the American far-right.
The propaganda efforts might be having some effect, since some Republican representatives have been regurgitating Brazilian conservative talk-point verbatim. Here's Maria Elvira Salazar doing just that (hey isn't that Paulo Figueiredo at the end?)
Be suspicious whenever you see the Brazilian dictatorship talking point being spread. It is an on-going attempt to undermine our democracy.
The far-right has a very clear strategy to spread their propaganda, and Twitter had a part in it. From the top 10 most used social medias in Brazil, Twitter was the least popular (losing to Whatsapp, Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Linkedin, Messenger, Kwai and Pinterest). So the objective of the far-right factions working in there was to mainly shape the public opinion of Americans. Elon Musk never says anything about Brazilian law and government that a Bolsonaro supporter hadn't said before in the exact same words. The country's history with Starlink further supports the connection between Elon Musk and the far-right.
Starlink in Brazil
Starlink started it's operations in Brazil as of January of 2022. The only reason why they were able to operate here was because Bolsonaro's government interfered with Anatel (the National Telecommunications Agency) to approve the company's contract despite many irregularities. Musk promoted his company's presence in the country by saying he would bring internet access to 19 thousand schools in remote locations across the Amazon.
From March to July of this year, at least 50 Starlink antennaes were found in illegal mining operations in the Amazon. Starlink refuses to share information about their users even though they have precise data that would allow to identify and localize illegal mining activities; which is worrying because Starlink is the preferred tool of communication of the Amazon organized crime.
No schools have been connected to Starlink as of yet.
In conclusion
Twitter was the main site for many Brazilian artists to share and sell their creations, and it's suspension certainly impacts their lives. These people have the right to be upset; it's getting harder and harder to be an artist every day. But with how Twitter has been run, and it's growing support for nazi-adjacent groups and attacks against our government, I can't say that blocking Twitter was a bad thing.
What is happening to Twitter right now is just one chapter of an on-going narrative dispute, fueled by the desire of some political sections for the rise of the far-right once again. A far-right that has a lot to gain from being able to facilitate the illegal operations of logging and mining in the Amazon, and who can only get to power again by challenging the Brazilian democracy in the American public opinion.
I don't want this blog post to sound like an Alexandre de Moraes apologia. He is not a hero either and he's certainly only doing this to support his own interests; which right now just so happens to coincide with defending Brazilian sovereignty.
I'll echo the sentiments I said in a previous post and say that I hope that Brazil becomes only the first one in a wave of anti-Twitter sentiment across the globe.