Judge rules Elon Musk's X Holdings must disclose full ownership structure

In a ruling earlier this week, a federal judge in California decided to make public X Holdings’ detailed corporate disclosure statement, a move that will effectively unveil the list of shareholders of X’s parent company, formerly known as Twitter, and X.ai, the artificial intelligence startup founded by Elon Musk in 2023. In 2022, Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion, took the company private, and laid off about three-quarters of its employees. Last year, a group of former Twitter employees sued X for arbitration fees arising from a dispute with their former employer. Jacob Silverman, a freelance journalist, intervened in the case with the help of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to make the disclosures public. While lawyers for Musk and X argued that “X Holdings, as a matter of normal practice and policy, does not publish or make public information about its owners/shareholders and treats such information as confidential,” the judge was not swayed by any alleged need for confidentiality. At the time Musk acquired X Holdings, several investors were reportedly included Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey (who transferred more than $1 billion worth of Twitter stock to the company), Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and Silicon Valley venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Sequoia Capital. But Musk has never disclosed a full breakdown of investors or the company's structure. X Holdings now has to file documents with the court by September 4. (Fortune)