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Comment by 0xy | Hacker News Reader

This is outdated information. X was profitable and valued at 90% of its purchase price according to valuations by its creditors as of last year, prior to the acquisition.

The vast majority of advertisers returned, including large ones like Apple plus their expenses were reduced by over half.

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> The vast majority of advertisers returned,

They returned in the first few months of the Trump administration when Elon was an important man in the government with direct access to POTUS. But after Musk fell from the Trump's good graces the same advertisers quickly took their marbles and quietly left twitter.

I was seeing Disney and Apple ads on X pretty quickly after Elon bought it. I don't think advertisers care as much as you think, if you're a major company you can't easily skip a major advertising platform without it impacting your bottom line

What are your sources for this?

I mean, even if advertisers "returned" (which seems unlikely), it would still be a 3 years of lost growth.

The FT reported that the banks had sold the debt at par, which would seem to suggest that the company was doing OK.

It might also have been done to keep the relationship with Musk, given his apparent political power at the time.

Elon's participation in a project produces otherwise incomprehensible valuations across several businesses. So, yeah, either all those businesses are doing OK or Elon's funders are inflating a bubble.

Since I haven't heard a peep of a complaint from Elon's financial backers about having a declining social media site shoved into their AI investment, the investors are still thinking that they could unload on greater fools when the time comes.

Well given that it's a private investment they can mark it whenever they want so it's helpful for them. It's also possible (though I don't think it likely) that xAI makes them loads of money.

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