In 2022, Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, dragging in a roster of big-name investors like Larry Ellison, Andreessen Horowitz, and Bill Ackman’s foundation. At the time, everyone thought he overpaid. Investment giants like Fidelity quickly marked down their stakes. Now the tables have turned: those investors are looking at returns near 200%.
X’s advertising revenue still hasn’t recovered, and user growth has stalled. The turnaround came via two Musk-directed mergers: in March 2025, he combined AI company xAI (valued at $80 billion) with X (valued at $44 billion including debt); this February, the merged entity was folded into SpaceX. SpaceX has filed confidentially for an IPO, potentially in June at a valuation over $2 trillion, giving X shareholders a chance to cash out.
After the two mergers and financing dilution, X shareholders now hold about 5% of SpaceX, worth roughly $100 billion at a $2 trillion valuation. The original Twitter purchase price of $44 billion involved about $33.5 billion in equity, with outside investors contributing around $10 billion. Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal kept his Twitter stake and participated in xAI’s early funding; his SpaceX stake is now worth over $4 billion, more than seven times his original investment. Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki, says he marked down his Twitter position by 75% before the merger corrected it. If SpaceX goes public at its target valuation, he expects returns of 2.5 to 3 times his original investment. But he also notes that SpaceX holdings were heavily diluted — Musk, he says, did this to make Twitter and xAI investors whole.