Social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, was a publicly traded company until late 2022. While the company was taken private by billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk for $44 billion, the question of who owns X has a more complicated answer since Musk had several investors involved in the deal.
In this article, we'll discuss the current ownership structure of X and other important governance information you need to know.
Who is the owner of X?
Until October 2022, X (then known as Twitter) was a publicly traded company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TWTR. It was taken private by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk toward the end of that month, and its name was subsequently changed to X in March 2023.
(Note: X.com was an online bank co-founded by Musk during the dot-com boom in the late 1990s. Musk reacquired the domain X.com from PayPal (PYPL +1.90%) in 2017.)
Technically speaking, Musk created a parent company (X Holdings) that is the owner of X Corp. He also has registered a company known as X.AI, which focuses on artificial intelligence (AI), and that could explain the need for the parent-subsidiary structure.
How Musk acquired Twitter
In early 2022, Musk -- a vocal critic of speech restrictions on Twitter -- began accumulating shares of the social media company. By April 2022, Musk had become the largest shareholder.
Just a few weeks later, Musk made an unsolicited $44 billion offer to buy the company, which Twitter's board of directors initially rejected but later decided was in the best interests of Twitter shareholders.
In October 2022, Musk officially acquired Twitter for $44 billion.
Musk sold about $15 billion of his Tesla stock to fund the purchase and secured $13 billion in financing from several banks. He also raised capital from a few outside investors and convinced some of Twitter's largest public shareholders to roll their shares into the new private company.
Who is on the board of directors for X?
As a publicly traded company, X (then Twitter) had a board of directors with nine members, including then-CEO Parag Agrawal.
Immediately following Musk's takeover of X in Oct. 2022, he dissolved the company's board of directors and fired its key leaders, appointed himself CEO, and became the company's sole director. However, at the time, Musk stated on the platform that the dissolution of the board "is just temporary."
As of January 2025, Linda Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal executive, is the CEO of X Corp. Musk serves as chief technology officer (CTO) and still has the executive chairman role. No further information has been released about a new board of directors. As far as we know, Elon Musk is still the only director.
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