We Got a Judge to Unseal a List of X's Shareholders

A federal judge agreed with me that knowing the identities of Elon Musk's investors is in the public interest.

This week, Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District of California ruled in favor of a motion to intervene that I filed in a civil case called Anoke v. Twitter in order to unseal a list of X’s shareholders. X’s lawyers filed the list under seal last year in one of the many civil lawsuits resulting from Elon Musk’s chaotic takeover of Twitter and his mass firing of thousands of employees. After Judge Illston’s ruling, the list soon appeared on the court docket (apparently it’s just a matter of a clerk clicking to change permissions on a limited-access filing) and was reported on first by the Washington Post and then in many other publications.

I’ll get to the contents of the list below, but please allow for a little throat-clearing and context-setting.

I was able to get this document thanks to the generous help and smart lawyering of Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP), a storied legal organization devoted to pro bono First Amendment work. As an independent journalist, I don’t have access to a lot of resources, so it was a blessing to have RCFP take me on. If you’re in a position to donate to them, please consider doing so. If you’re a journalist looking to get a document unsealed or if you have a First Amendment concern, reach out to them.

The case in which we intervened, Anoke v. Twitter, is just one of many X-related civil suits wending their way through the courts — from the four fired executives suing for $128 million to lower level employees who didn’t receive promised severance or claim that they were forced to break laws to fulfill Musk’s mercurial edicts (turn Twitter HQ into an employee hotel, mount a giant blazing X on the roof without permits, etc). In a previous post, I wrote about a list of names subpoenaed in one of these cases, Arnold v. X Corp, which helped reveal who was on Musk’s Twitter transition team and which Tesla engineers he drafted for his crash assessment of Twitter’s code base. (RCFP also filed on my behalf to unseal a shareholder list filed under seal in another civil case, McMillian v. Twitter.)

Not only does Musk owe a lot of money to his creditors, but he’s knee-deep in litigation that one might argue would never have been necessary had he abided by existing legal agreements, contracts, and labor law. Yes, it can save money in the short-term to stiff your landlord and cloud provider, or to forego state law-mandated severance payments. But it creates a lot of billable hours for lawyers and expensive potential settlements, along with the threat of regulatory enforcement. (As for reputational damage, Musk doesn’t seem to care.)

Musk, who decries lawfare, has aggressively pursued his own brand of it — from financing Gina Carano’s lawsuit against Disney to suing the National Labor Relations Board when it began an enforcement process against SpaceX for firing eight engineers who signed a letter criticizing Musk’s sexism. And there’s much more. “Musk and his companies have filed at least 23 lawsuits in federal courts alone since July of 2023,” according to Fortune.

With so many lawsuits before him, it’s almost inevitable that X’s lawyers would have to file sensitive company information with a court. Litigants have asked for a shareholder disclosure list to see if the judge has any conflict of interest and to see which entities might be impacted by an adverse ruling against X. Whenever possible, they seek to filed this information under seal to prevent its dissemination.

The list X filed with the court mentions 95 names and legal entities. Some of them are familiar names for Musk-watchers: Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, Jack Dorsey, Ross Gerber, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Sequoia, et al. There are 26 entries related to Fidelity, the mutual fund colossus. There’s Larry Ellison, the Oracle founder and one of the richest people in the world, along with Sean Combs Capital (yup). There’s Vy Capital, the UAE-based venture capital firm, and something called Q Tetris Holdings LLC, whose directors seem to be part of the Qatari government. Binance, the global crypto giant which recently paid a $4.3 billion fine to the US government for facilitating money laundering by terrorist groups and sanctioned entities, is listed an X investor. (Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to money laundering violations and is finishing up a short stint in federal prison.)

There are two entries for Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and another for his Kingdom Holding Company, which was the largest outside shareholder of Twitter when it was a public company. Prince Alwaleed briefly opposed Musk’s takeover — prompting some gentle sparring on Twitter — but he soon came around. Given Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman’s years-long crackdown against dissent and powerful businessmen and political rivals — which included imprisoning and torturing hundreds of prominent Saudis, including Prince Alwaleed, in Riyadh’s Ritz Carlton hotel — it’s likely that MBS controls those shares.

I’ve written about Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Twitter and its use of spies inside Twitter HQ to dox and imprison dissidents, and I’ll have more in my forthcoming book, GILDED RAGE, which Bloomsbury will publish next year. The question of the Saudi government’s ongoing relationship with X and Musk is essential, especially with Saudi security services still regularly doxing online dissidents — or merely everyday people with few online followers who post the slightest critique — and then imprisoning, torturing, and killing them. There are yet more ongoing lawsuits against Twitter for failing to stop the Saudi spy ring operating inside Twitter and serving up its most vulnerable users to a brutal dictatorship. McKinsey, the consulting firm, is a defendant in one of these cases for its role in producing for the Saudi government a list of prominent Saudis on Twitter — which essentially became a list of targets for regime enforcers.

Some people have asked me why this list matters, or why I care, or have claimed that we already know all of this information (we don’t). I am tired of arguing with people who seem to be operating in bad faith or simply to obstruct further inquiry. I’ve described in several posts why it’s important to know who the volatile owner of a major platform for public debate, political discourse, and government surveillance and information operations is working with — who he owes, who he listens to, and who might influence what happens on X.

While the list doesn’t include ownership amounts, it is valuable because these are the official legal names of the entities who own a piece of X. That’s a great starting point for journalists, researchers, regulators, activists, and anyone else who wants to know what’s going on behind the scenes of this important company. What are some of these obscure overseas companies and trusts? What’s Shahidi Tactic Group LLC? How does Andrea Stroppa, a young Italian cybersecurity professional who talks to Musk regularly on X and claims to have helped addressed the site’s issues with child exploitation, own a piece of the company? Why didn’t Musk’s close associates like David Sacks and Antonio Gracias not pitch in money?

I plan to keep digging and hope other people do, too. Reach out if you’d like to chat or if you’re familiar with any of the entities listed below.

X Shareholder List, as of 6/9/23

8VC Opportunities Fund II, L.P.

ADREM X LLC

ADREM Y LLC

Afshar Partners, LP

Andrea Stroppa

Andreessen Horowitz LSV Fund III, L.P.

Anthem Ventures, LLC

ARK Venture Private Holdings LLC

BAMCO, Inc.

Bandera Fund LLC

Baron Opportunity Fund

Baron Partners Fund

Binance Capital Management Co., Ltd

Brookfield Project X L.P.

CCM 2020 Investments LLC

Cheng and Chen Family Trust

CNK Fund IV, L.P.

Danilo Kawasaki

Dayton Family Enterprises, LLC

Dayton Family Investments, LLC

DFJ GROWTH IV, L.P.

DFJ GROWTH IV PARALLEL FUND, LLC

DFJ GROWTH X-I, L.P.

Eden Relationship Capital L.P.

Elon Musk as Trustee of the Elon Musk Revocable Trust dated July 22, 2003

FIAM Target Date Blue Chip Growth Commingled Pool By: Fidelity Institutional Asset Management Trust Company as Trustee

Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Commingled Pool By: Fidelity Management Trust Company, as Trustee

Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Institutional Trust By its manager Fidelity Investments Canada ULC

Fidelity Canadian Growth Company Fund by its manager Fidelity Investments Canada ULC

Fidelity Central Investment Portfolios LLC: Fidelity U.S. Equity Central Fund - Communication Services Sub

Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Advisor New Insights Fund - Sub A

Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Advisor New Insights Fund - Sub B

Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Contrafund

Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Contrafund K6

Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Series Opportunistic Insights Fund

Fidelity Contrafund Commingled Pool By: Fidelity Management Trust Company, as Trustee

Fidelity Destiny Portfolios: Fidelity Advisor Diversified Stock Fund

Fidelity Global Growth and Value Investment Trust - Sub A By its manager Fidelity Investments Canada ULC:

Fidelity Global Innovators Investment Trust by its manager Fidelity Investments Canada ULC

Fidelity Growth Company Commingled Pool By: Fidelity Management Trust Company, as Trustee

Fidelity Insights Investment Trust By its manager Fidelity Investments Canada ULC

Fidelity Mt. Vernon Street Trust: Fidelity Growth Company Fund

Fidelity Mt. Vernon Street Trust : Fidelity Growth Company K6 Fund

Fidelity Mt. Vernon Street Trust: Fidelity Series Growth Company Fund

Fidelity OTC Commingled Pool By: Fidelity Management Trust Company, as Trustee

Fidelity Puritan Trust: Fidelity Puritan Fund - Equity Sub B

Fidelity Puritan Trust: Puritan K6 Fund - Equity Subportfolio

Fidelity Securities Fund: Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund

Fidelity Securities Fund: Fidelity Blue Chip Growth K6 Fund

Fidelity Securities Fund: Fidelity OTC K6 Portfolio

Fidelity Securities Fund: Fidelity OTC Portfolio

Fidelity Select Portfolios : Select Communication Services Portfolio

G64 Ventures LLC

Gerber Kawasaki Inc.

GFNCI LLC

Gigafund 0.21, LP

Glacier Ventures LLC

Go Mav, LLC

HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud

HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud

IMG US, LLC

Jack Dorsey Remainder LLC

Jack Dorsey Tr Ua 12/08/2010 Jack Dorsey Revocable Trust

Kingdom Holding Company

Lawrence J. Ellison Revocable Trust

Linda Ye and Robin Ren Family Foundation

Litani Ventures

Luchi Fiduciaria SR POS. 365

Manhattan Venture Partners X LLC

Mirae Asset Innovation X ONE, LLC

Mirae Asset Project X Fund I, LP

Olivier Janssens

Q Tetris Holding LLC

Ross Gerber

Santo Lira LLC

SC CDA1 LLC

SCGE Fund, L.P.

SCGGF III – U.S./India Management, L.P.

SCHF (M) PV, L.P.

Scott Nolan

SC US/E Expansion Fund I Management, L.P.

Sean Combs Capital, LLC

Sequent (Schweiz) AG as Trustee of the Debala Trust

Sequioa Capital Fund, L.P.

Series N Dis, a series of Atreides Special Circumstances Fund, LLC

Shahidi Tactic Group, LLC

Steve Davis

T. One Holdings LLC

The Pershing Square Foundation

TM33 Partner Holdings LLC

Tresser Blvd 402 LLC

UnipolSai S.P.A.

Variable Insurance Products Fund II: VIP Contrafund Portfolio - Subportfolio A

VYC25 Limited

X Holdings I Investment, LLC