Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
Elon Musk was just forced to reveal who owns X. Here's the list (fortune.com)
173 points by jesperancinha 661 days ago
16 comments

Of interest from the order[0]:

> Pursuant to Northern District of California Civil Local Rule 3-15 and Rule 7.1 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Respondent X Corp. as successor in interest to named Respondent Twitter, Inc., by and through its counsel, certifies that Twitter, Inc. has been merged into X Corp. and no longer exists. Respondent X Holdings Corp., as successor in interest to named Respondent X Holdings I, Inc., by and through its counsel, certifies that X Holdings I, Inc. has been merged into X Holdings Corp. and no longer exists. X Corp. is wholly owned by X Holdings Corp. No publicly held corporation owns 10% or more of X Corp.’s or X Holdings Corp.’s stock.

[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/2a00ce74-6d58-4f8e-...

May we ask why this is of interest. As other comments have mentioned, there is nothing unusual here. What are we missing.
When your shell company is a Russian nesting doll.
Not a lawyer, but looks like a pretty simple takeover structure to me.
I sold a company and ended up with roughly the same. This is 100% bog standard.
I find it strange that details of the owners of a private company isn't publicly available information in the first place (speaking as someone from a country – the UK – where this is publicly available information).

In the UK (and I'd assume many other countries), you can see the owners of private companies on the Companies House website[0], along with those with 'significant control' and financial statements. It's pretty interesting and useful to look at sometimes.

[0] https://www.gov.uk/get-information-about-a-company

Companies House is the exception rather than the rule. The UK is actually very good at this.
Without taking from your point, I believe you can have a UK limited company owned by an entity in a different jurisdiction that's less good than the UK.
It’s very state dependent in the USA. Some states, like Texas, require the owner be public and the actual owner of the LLC.
Why is it strange? I do not see why there would be an expectation that details of company's investor relationships would be known to people that have nothing to do with company's business. "Pretty interesting" doesn't sound like a good justification.
Companies run the world. Many are as large as entire countries, and have huge influence over large aspects of peoples lives - from media, to food, to medicine, etc. That makes it in the publics interest to have insights into how they are controlled. Follow the money.
Controlling and investing are completely different things. Control is exercised by the board and the management, and these are pretty much universally public for a large company. However, investment does not have to come with a seat on the board - a large one can, and then, again, it would be public, but it doesn't have to. You seem to confuse entirely different things.
It's useful to know who owns a company or know a company's financial state for anyone who wants to do business with that company.

It adds a level of transparency that makes it easier if you're at the beginning of a relationship with a company (i.e. there may not be a large amount of trust at the start of the relationship; knowing who owns a company and its financial state can be good signals).

It may be "useful" for me to inspect your private bank accounts (maybe you are a good investor and I can learn something!) but it's no justification for me to violate your privacy. It may be very "useful" for me to know the business plans of my competitor, but gaining access to them is usually qualified as criminal. "Useful" is not something that authomatically gives access to private information just because somebody wants to.

> knowing who owns a company and its financial state can be good signals

That makes no sense. Public companies are owned by hundreds of individuals and entities, and the company has zero control over it, making any conclusions based on that is nonsense. Moreover, even private company can't really block an investor from selling their share to another investor, why would anyone take it as a "signal" to anything, except the signal that the buying investor considers it to be a good deal? This looks very much like an instance of motivated reasoning.

> It may be "useful" for me to inspect your private bank accounts (maybe you are a good investor and I can learn something!) but it's no justification for me to violate your privacy.

Right, that's why that's not a thing. We're talking about limited liability companies, not people. They're separate entities.

> It may be very "useful" for me to know the business plans of my competitor, but gaining access to them is usually qualified as criminal. "Useful" is not something that authomatically gives access to private information just because somebody wants to.

The information available is very basic stuff – the company's registered address, its officers, its shareholders and how much they own, insolvency information, and yearly accounts.

My point in it being 'useful' is that it's useful to know who you're going into business with; a cursory look at the company's very basic information can help in that, before, for example, you sign a contract with them.

> Public companies are owned by hundreds of individuals and entities, and the company has zero control over it, making any conclusions based on that is nonsense.

Sure, some companies are owned by hundreds of individuals and entities. A lot are owned by one or two or five people. Either way, it's useful to know who owns the company, and who owns more than others (i.e. controls more than others).

> Moreover, even private company can't really block an investor from selling their share to another investor, why would anyone take it as a "signal" to anything, except the signal that the buying investor considers it to be a good deal? This looks very much like an instance of motivated reasoning.

What are you talking about? I'm not talking about 'useful' to investors (which it definitely is). I'm talking about 'useful' to people doing business with that company. Knowing exactly who you're doing business with, and how financially secure the company is, is very useful. You don't want to go in to business with a company that's about to go under.

> We're talking about limited liability companies, not people. They're separate entities.

I know, but this still doesn't validate the logic "I am curious about it therefore I must be given rights to access any information I want".

> I'm talking about 'useful' to people doing business with that company.

This makes even less sense. Nobody checks the list of shareholders of Walmart each time they go to buy milk. And you definitely are not "doing business with" the investors - you're at most are doing business with the management and the line workers. Surely, for mom-and-pop shops those are the same people, but for any company of decent size, and for pretty much any startup company out there, you never "doing business with" the investors - they at most advise the management, but they do not actually run things.

> You don't want to go in to business with a company that's about to go under.

That has nothing to do with the list of investors. The same investors could invest in a wildly successful and completely failing businesses, at the same time, and knowing the list of investors gives you zero information about whether or not the company is about to go under.

Same in Estonia. You can see the owners / shareholders of every private company and also all the financial / tax information per financial quarter (and year).
I'm surprised Fidelity is on the list. Your retirement account might still own shares of X
Fidelity has long been known to be one of the owners of X; their markdowns on the value of their X holdings have long been the most common citation of how far X's value has plummeted under Musk's stewardship.
Fidelity is one of the largest asset managers in the world ($4.9T in assets).

They have a piece of almost every pie.

But the other major asset managers don't have nearly the same exposure. Embarrassing for Fidelity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asset_management_firms

Most of the listed shareholders were shareholders in Twitter well before Musk bought it - in fact, it was during Twitter's IPO roadshow.

For example - DFJ (2010), the Al Saud family (2011), and Fidelity (2011).

In this case, these are minority investors restoring their ownership stake.

IMO it was a pretty good gamble. Even if his mental decline seemed obvious, it wasn't obvious they would be prying X from his cold dead hands at all or nearly this late.
I'm not surprised, Fidelity also owns a piece of SpaceX.
Yeah how does owning private stock work for those funds? Kind of interesting. For most funds don’t they constantly sell and buy each stock to rebalance it
There is vast number of different types of funds that invest in nearly anything you can imagine. Real estate, land(farmland and forrest), public stocks, bonds. Also why not private stocks.

ETFs traded on exchanges and index funds is just very special setups. Which don't prevent other forms of funds that is essentially piles of money given out for them to manage often with limitations of pulling it out.

P Diddy and a Saudi Prince.

What nice company to keep.

Happy to see that none of my Vanguard funds are listed.
maybe there's a deeper reason every faang moved from vanguard to fidelity or E-Trade
Has there always been a graveyard of dead comments at the end of posts here? I've been surprised at having seen them on a couple posts recently.

I know it's an election year in the US so my experience is that there's more nonsense than normal in online spaces but it's surprising here.

What I'm seeing here is pretty typical of what I normally see with showdead turned on when on a topic that is vaguely political in nature (anything with Musk in the headline counts).
Most political posts attract that sort of nonsense on this site.

Any post with musk as well.

And for some reason education posts?

There is a quite vocal handful of commenters who loathe the public education system (although perhaps not for the reasons one might initially expect)
The reason I would expect is that they think the teachers are showing their kids explicit sexual content, encouraging them to be transgender, and telling them about how they should hate America and white people. Is that not accurate?
With heavy and ironic stress on "they think" ...
Just my take: Some parents are having growing concerns about the quality of basic education (reading, math, history) that their kids are receiving. Apparently questioning the effectiveness of how their tax dollars are spent makes them a homophobe and a racist. Oh, and probably "weird" too.
This is one of those posts that just tries to throw in as many rage baiting concepts at once in to maximize angry engagement.

Bait aside, nobody calls you homophobic for asking good faith questions about how the schools budget is spent. But it would be absurd to imply the 12 hours a year kids are taught about sexuality is somehow derailing the entire curriculum. When talking about revamping education, only people that have fully drank Kool aid would think "it's because all of that money is used to turn my kids gay".

I have never seen these comments around. What their usual arguments?
> for some reason education posts

Well, the reason, if I understand the critics' arguments correctly, is that compulsory public education was instituted a century ago (a) quickly, without serious policy discussion or any experimental evidence and (b) with the goal of solving a very specific social problem that existed a hundred years ago (poor families migrating en masse from the countryside to cities to work in the factory, and their bored young children wandering around city streets engaging in mischief while both parents were busy instead of learning useful skills like milking cows or reading the Bible, which would have been the case back in the countryside) - and it's not quite clear whether in today's social conditions it's still worth it.

Any % each of those owners actually own? For me that would be the most important aspect of ownership
Initial investment was $33.5bn Musk and $7.1bn from other equity investors.

  $1.89bn (~4%) from Prince Alwaleed
  $1bn (~2%) from Jack Dorsey, 
  $500m from Ellison,
  $300m from Fidelity,
  ... and so on.
Those numbers might have changed since.

ps. Alwaleed has also invested $400 million into xAI

When Musk says X is all about freedom of speech, remind him that one of its biggest owners is intimately tied to a government that executes people for mild criticism.
X is a megaphone for Musk and a tool to get political favours. X was already used to silence the opposition in Turkey and India during elections. A Saudi prince having a minority stake is a drop in a bucket of free speech violations.
it's basically his personal blog that he allows others to comment on. he bought it, I say let him have it!
Unfortunately for Musk the US Constitution doesn't apply everywhere.

Lately I've been thinking that the Chinese had a good point with their great firewall. The EU is already banning Russian media perhaps we should ad Americans to the list.

X is under juridiction of a country intimately tied to genocide. No moral high ground in any "intimate ties" to any government involved.
your point being ? Freedom of speech for US , we cannot enforce every country to have it
If one owner bans speech he doesn't like (@Elonjet), other owners will ask to do the same. Having control of speech on Twitter was likely a factor in the "investment".
The timeline of Musk buying Twitter was a trainwreck, so I don't think there were any factors, just an attempt at salvaging an awful deal.
Musk frequently comments on political issues in other countries.
I doubt it. The owners were named in a lawsuit, so the % is irrelevant as far as the suit is concerned.
yeah, this.

I'm still convinced that Elon took a deal to deliberately burn twitter to the ground. I'm unsure how we'd prove it but his behaviour makes little sense otherwise.

Twitter has value beyond its market cap, in the same way that a newspaper does. For the ~richest man in the world, dollars don’t mean a lot.
had value.

He's doing his damndest (while self fellating himself on it) to destroy that non market-cap value.

Right. people don't seem to get that. there's this narrative about how Elon Musk overpaid for Twitter, as if there were a vibrant market of buyers and sellers of Twitter. there's only one Twitter, and it's worth whatever someone wants to pay for it.

Say somebody comes up to you and says hey, nice jacket. Would you like to sell it to me for $5,000? You bought the jacket for $500, and it was mass produced and you can just buy another one with that money. sounds like a great deal! But if I add that we're in Boston and it's winter and we're outside, miles from shelter, and it's snowing. Suddenly, sellling your winter coat is a way worse idea and not worth making $4,950.

Americans have long held this belief that prices are prices. If I buy a can of beans, it should be the same price if you buy the can of beans instead of me. But in reality, prices are totally made up. Hopefully the price of something is greater than it cost to make it, along with all the other expenses, so the business can remain open and continue, but businesses that go out of business have to sell their items at a loss. Which makes their inventory worth exactly as much as people are willing to pay, usually at a discount.

Sure, he wanted a better deal, but there's only one Twitter, and it's his (plus a bunch of investors and Fidelity). He didn't overpay for anything, he gets to run it how he wants, now that it's his.

If you have to sue the person offering you 5K for your jacket to ensure they fulfil the deal, it's fair to speculate that even they thought they'd paid too much.
fair, but I mean, money is money, if I could see a way to potentially weasel out of paying what I said I would, in those kind of amounts, is probably give that a shot too.
I think Hanlon’s Razor probably applies here; he’s just really incompetent.
My favorite pet theory is that Musk taking over Twitter is to disentangle the bureaucratic and journalistic class from the direct Tumblr/4chan content pipeline they've all been drinking from for years. The only way he could make it work was to make the space as distasteful as possible. I'm giving him way too much credit, of course, but I can dream.
He offered to buy an unprofitable company for 10 times what Disney paid for Lucasfilm because "funny number", tried to back out of the deal any way he could, and in the end was forced by a court. What are you talking about?
I assure you the 4chan content pipeline has increased an order of magnitude since the Musk takeover. A comment thread on an Elon post will consistently have multiple posts with >100k views containing slurs or "jews bad Hitler good" accounts.
Clearly yes; my point was that the taste and decision makers that previously might've taken stronger cues from Twitter are now much less likely to see it as a venue for worthwhile discussions. I'm probably overvaluing that vs the harm of broadcasting puerile content, but I recognize this is fundamentally an unserious take.
Oh ok, it was aspirational to more seriously surface the problems with its information sources. Ya, I wouldn't have my hopes up.
It feels weird knowing that user counts of Twitter by regions is like that[1], with content fractions occasionally mentioned to be even less generally palatable, and seeing nothing recognizably related to the second one on the list. Talk about free lunches...

1: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0840/8370/3830/articles/Nu...

> Ross Gerber and Gerber Kawasaki

I see the dumb money also got a seat a the table.

Are those the knife people? Or the baby food?
They're the angry stock market rodeo clown people.
Not majority owned by Blackrock, Vanguard and Goldman Sachs? Guess that truly explains all the anti-X vitriol in the press .
What about the vitriol in the general public.
> What about the vitriol in the general public

People seems to like X. The far-left tries to make it looks like X is far-right but the truth is: anyone can use X, even the far left (and oh boy do they use it) and censorship there is now highly uncommon. Many accounts wrongfully closed have been reinstated.

Wasn't there numbers posted recently showing that X now has more active users than it used to?

It may or may not be profitable as a company, but the public certainly seems to still be using X.

> anyone can use X, even the far left (and oh boy do they use it) and censorship there is now highly uncommon.

For the right, censorship on twitter is uncommon. For the left it is common, especially if you dare criticize whats his face.

There is something about this particular worldview and the username “tactical coder” that will never not be extremely amusing to me.
The full list from the article:

    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 InstitutionalAsset Management Trust Company as Trustee
    Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Commingled Pool By: Fidelity Management TrustCompany, as Trustee
    Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Institutional Trust By its manager Fidelity InvestmentsCanada ULC
    Fidelity Canadian Growth Company Fund by its manager Fidelity InvestmentsCanada 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
    Fidelity Global Innovators Investment Trust by its manager Fidelity InvestmentsCanada ULC
    Fidelity Growth Company Commingled Pool By: Fidelity Management TrustCompany, as Trustee
    Fidelity Insights Investment Trust By its manager Fidelity Investments CanadaULC
    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
    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
Even professional investors can make terrible deals.
They rarely beat the market... Those who do are rather special cases.
“Fidelity Puritan Trust”. Seems a perfect fit ;)
What's the joke here? There are like a dozen Fidelity trusts on the list.

Edit: my Karma been flapping on this one (bot-monitor, and I'm on vacation).

Is the joke because of Puritanical ideals and Twitter don't get along?

Really, as others have said, Fidelity is in like everything. And, loads of big companies have all kinds of trusts. I don't see the perfect fit.

But if there is a joke I can share with my friends that work at Fidelity I'd like to know - more than just "haha bad investment"

there are two jokes to be had, it depends on how you see Twitter. One is, as you mentioned, how certain aspects of Twitter don't align with Puritanical beliefs. The other is how Twitter's far-right following adheres to certain Puritanical beliefs.
One reason Musk didn't want this revealed is that this includes some of Putin's oligarchs who are sanctioned by the US government (Petr Aven and Vadim Moshkovich).

More details:

https://x.com/HeatherBurgundy/status/1827303361106108789

> Petr Aven is a Russian billionaire, founder of Alfa Group, one of the main wallets for Putin. Aven is one of Putin's oldest friends. Putin would be in prison instead of becoming president without him. Aven covered for Vladimir Putin in 1992, when he organized an illegal trade in export licenses; he was also present at a meeting with Putin on February 24, 2022, in the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. He did not express any protest against "SVO" and supported Putin. By the way, he, together with Fridman, is trying to lift sanctions from himself, just yesterday he received another refusal in this matter. In the purchase of Twitter he is represented by the company "8VC Opportunities Fund II, LP", where his son Denis works.

> Vadim Moshkovich is a sanctioned Russian agricultural billionaire who was a member of the "Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation." In other words, he was officially part of Putin's inner circle. Moshkovich owns Russia's largest agricultural holding, Rusagro. Naturally, he was also present at the meeting with Putin on February 24, 2022, and, like Aven, did not express any protest against Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In the purchase of Twitter he is represented by the company "8VC Opportunities Fund II, LP", where his son Jack (Eugene) works.

> Knowing all this, we now understand Elon Musk's bias. Everyone was wondering how it was possible that Twitter shares (X) were falling, advertisers were breaking contracts, and no one was doing anything. This was direct damage to investors. But everyone failed to take into account the fact that investors needed a platform to promote their narratives, such as: support for Putin and Russia; lobbying for freezing the war in Ukraine; removing the Ukrainian agenda from the top news etc.

Musk doesn't have to answer to those investors.

They must be passive investors, as everybody else. Their ownership is unlikely to have any influence.

It also seems to be just a "status" investment. They are not getting much back, let alone a 1000% ROI.

They also aren’t investors. This person is claiming that relatives of some rich Russians are working at some financial firm that invested some amount into Twitter. There isn’t even any evidence their money is in Twitter as far as I can tell.
>Binance Capital Management Co., Ltd

Wait, what?!

I can understand the surprise so I'm not sure why you're downvoted. Companies like Coinbase and Binance, who never stole a cent from their users (as opposed to crooks like Alameda/FTX/SBF), are extremely successful.

Whether or not one appreciate cryptocurrencies, these companies are worth tens of billions. It's not a surprise that they invest in other companies.

why should this be surprising?
Yeah this was reported at the time of the acquisition.
I am not familiar with US politics but Musk has of course done lots of political things in the past and now with the Trump interview, this feels slightly like a target list. Could it serve as one?
No one in or around that list wanted that information published.
Target for what?
There are a lot of people out there who can make a lot of money flow, (and more importantly not flow), in any direction they want.

There are a lot of people out there who can, say, go through all of your tax returns and make sure that every i was dotted and every t was crossed.

Own a business that needed government licensing? There are a lot of people that take action to hold up that process.

And on, and on, and on.

There are a million ways in a society as complex as ours that you can be targeted. I always say that our society has so many laws, regulations, and so on that there is no one who can claim to be law-abiding and have that claim hold up to three letter agency level scrutiny. Or even Halliburton corporate legal level scrutiny for that matter.

You ask for what they could be targeted? I think it was Cardinal Richelieu who wrote about needing only a small amount of work done by a supposed honest man, and in that corpus being able to find something for which that supposed honest man could be hung. It's been 400 years and our technologies are now so good that you probably don't even need a small amount.

When Ukraine war started for example, there were many lists of oligarchs, "Putin's circle" cieculating around. These would lead to, even when there were no sanctions, activism against these names and avoidance of doing business with these names.

Divide & Conquer: (1) Put list of your enemies names on a wall, making then more vulnerable. When they are unable to appear neutral or allied to someone else than your enemy again, they will become socially isolated. (2) Cause some reason why everyone should be scared of being an ally of your enemy. (3) Take down your enemy, knowing no one will come in defense of them.

Note that my first example does not refer to the assasinations of Russian oligarchs, and I only speak of targeting as a tactic of Divide & Conquer strategy.