Elon Musk forcibly revealed X’s shareholders.
The Hollywood Reporter mentions that Musk, who acquired Twitter in October 2022 for a reported $44 billion and later renamed it X, is facing a lawsuit that former employees of Twitter have filed stating he has not honored their employee contracts. As part of that proceeding, X initially shared a redacted list of company investors in 2023.
NBC News notes that releasing a list that reflects investors in a company is common practice. However, journalist Jacob Silverman pushed for the full list to be shared publicly, with the aid of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP), and a motion was filed to request that X’s full records be revealed in July 2024.
On Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, X was told to share a more detailed list of its investors due to an order from U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco, CA, stating that X “did not show good cause” to hide its list from the public, according to RCFP.
“The Court GRANTS the motion to intervene and to unseal the supplemental corporate disclosure statement filed at Dkt. No. 36. Respondents shall file an unredacted version of the supplemental corporate disclosure statement on the public docket no later than September 4, 2024,” the court concluded, per a document.
“Reporters Committee attorneys are very pleased with the district court’s ruling, which vindicates not only the interest of our client, Mr. Silverman, but also the interest of the general public in knowing who owns X,” said Katie Townsend, the Reporters Committee’s deputy executive director and legal director, per RCFP. “Corporate ownership information of this kind is routinely disclosed in civil litigation and, as the district court correctly concluded, there is no reason why it should have been sealed here.”
Among those listed are at least 100 groups, including Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs, The Washington Post mentions. Also listed are Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud.
A fund linked to Hip Hop mogul Sean Diddy Combs is also among the investors, although the size of the investment is unclear.
