A year ago, tech mogul Elon Musk griped that he was “obviously overpaying” for Twitter in the $44 billion deal that the social network sued him to complete.
Now we know how inflated Musk believe his bid was: X, the new name of Twitter, on Monday informed employees eligible for stock grants that they would receive shares at a valuation of $19 billion.
News of X’s stock grants to employees with the reduced valuation was first reported by Fortune. Musk in March 2023 had told staffers that he estimated the company’s value had dropped to $20 billion. (A request for comment sent to the company’s PR email address produced an autoreply message that said, “Busy now, please check back later.”)
Still, Musk, who also serves as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX (among his involvement in other business interests), is bullish on the future of X, which he wants to turn into “the everything app” — including processing payments and managing users’ “entire financial life.”
The tech mogul closed the debt-burdened Twitter deal on Oct. 27, 2022. Since then, X’s monthly active users have shrunk by about 15% according to third-party estimates. Advertising revenue has plunged as much as 60% (according to Musk himself), amid ongoing concerns about hate speech and misinformation (areas that X CEO Linda Yaccarino says the company is actively addressing).
As the new owner of Twitter, Musk among other things has overseen an 80% reduction in headcount; partially dismantled Twitter’s blue check-mark system designed to boost trust in the authenticity of notable accounts and now grants “verified” status to $8-per-month X Premium subscribers (whose posts receive algorithmic preference); and launched a test to charge users $1 per year to post to the platform (which he says is necessary to combat bots).
