Who Said Being Elon Musk's Twitter Sidekick Was a Suckers' Deal? Riding on SpaceX's IPO, Early Shareholders Cash Out with Nearly Double the Profit

According to Dongcha Beating monitoring, in 2022, Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion, bringing along renowned investors such as Larry Ellison, Andreessen Horowitz, and Bill Ackman's foundation. At that time, it was widely believed that he had overpaid, leading Fidelity and other institutional investors to significantly write down their positions. However, the situation has since reversed, with these investors seeing a nearly 200% return on their equity.

Twitter's ad revenue has not recovered to this day, and user growth has stagnated. The investors' turnaround was driven by Musk's leadership in two rounds of mergers and acquisitions: in March 2025, he merged the AI company xAI (valued at $80 billion) with X (valued at $44 billion including debt); in February of this year, the merged company was further merged into SpaceX. SpaceX has secretly filed for an IPO, which could debut in June at a valuation of over $2 trillion, allowing X shareholders the opportunity to cash out.

After two rounds of M&A and fundraising dilution, X shareholders currently hold approximately 5% of SpaceX, with a value of around $100 billion based on a $2 trillion valuation. Of the total $44 billion acquisition price for Twitter, about $33.5 billion was in equity contributions, with external investors contributing around $10 billion. Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal retained his Twitter stake during the acquisition and participated in xAI's early financing, and his current SpaceX stake is worth over $4 billion, more than seven times his original investment. Ross Gerber, CEO of investment management firm Gerber Kawasaki, stated that he had written down his Twitter position by 75%, only to recover after the merger. If SpaceX goes public at the target valuation, he expects a return of 2.5 to 3 times his initial investment. However, he also pointed out that SpaceX has undergone significant dilution, as Musk did this to ensure that Twitter and xAI investors recoup their investments.