Who Owns X?

Here's why I'm trying to intervene in a civil suit against Elon Musk's X.

When Elon Musk took Twitter private in the fall of 2022 in a $44 billion deal, he had a lot of help. Musk’s acquisition required him to take on debt, and as text messages revealed as part of court proceedings showed, he spent time messaging with venture capitalists, billionaire CEOs, and other allies, soliciting their advice and inviting billions of dollars of financial support. We could offer an educated guess about some of the major shareholders of the company now known as X, but as a private company, there’s no official, publicly available roster of who owns a piece of it. We don’t know who helped Musk when he was sued into consummating an acquisition deal he had previously attempted to renege on.

That’s why I am attempting to “intervene” in Anoke v. Twitter — one of the many civil suits filed against Musk and Twitter/X since his acquisition of the company — to request that a judge unseal a disclosure list of X’s shareholders. X had previously filed the list under seal, the kind of legal action that is routine. So is my attempt to get it unsealed — journalists do this all the time, arguing that transparency is in the interests of the courts and the general public.

I believe that people have a right to know who owns a company with such a prominent role in shaping public discourse, both in the United States and around the world. X’s self-proclaimed role as a guarantor of free speech means that we should know which outside entities — and which foreign governments — may be able to exert influence on the company.

I am grateful to be represented pro bono in this effort by Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which has a distinguished history of First Amendment legal work. You can read our initial filing here.