X Corp. (formerly Twitter)

X Corp. is the company behind the short-message service launched in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams. The operating company, Twitter, Inc., was incorporated in Delaware in April 2007 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in November 2013 under the ticker TWTR, from 1355 Market Street, San Francisco. Since it was taken private in 2022 the owner has changed three times in three years. X Corp. is today a Nevada corporation, named in the list of significant subsidiaries filed with SpaceX's Form S-1 on 20 May 2026.

History

Across sixteen years as a public company, Twitter's business stayed small relative to its cultural weight. In its last full reported year, ended December 2021, total revenue was US$5,077.5 million — advertising US$4,505.7 million, or 89 per cent, and data licensing and other US$571.8 million. It posted a US$492.7 million loss from operations and a US$221.4 million net loss. Average mDAU (monetizable daily active usage) for the fourth quarter of 2021 was 217 million, of which 38 million were in the United States and 179 million elsewhere, and headcount was over 7,500. The dependence of nine-tenths of revenue on a single advertising line was never resolved.

Since Musk closed his US$44 billion acquisition on 27 October 2022, the deepest change has been not in management or in the rules but in the chain of ownership. The service became X in July 2023 — English Wikipedia dates the rebrand to 23 July and the move from twitter.com to x.com to 17 May 2024 — and on 28 March 2025 xAI acquired X Holdings Corp. and X.AI Corp., the "X Merger" in SpaceX's filings. Under a merger agreement dated 31 January 2026, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. completed its acquisition of X.AI Holdings Corp. on 2 February 2026. A service that began as a by-product of SMS now appears in the accounts as part of a rocket company's AI segment, and SpaceX does not report X's results on their own.

Products and Services

These are the AI segment figures as retrospectively recast in SpaceX's S-1, not X on its own. The filing says that in 2023 and 2024 substantially all of the segment's revenue was advertising, subscription and data-licensing revenue generated by X, formerly known as Twitter, and attributes the US$595 million fall in advertising in 2024 to the loss of advertising partners for X. From 2025 Grok's revenue lands in the same bucket, so the column cannot be read straight through as the trajectory of X's advertising business. What it does show is that in the first quarter of 2026 the non-advertising line overtook advertising — a different company from the Twitter, Inc. of 2021, where advertising was 89 per cent of revenue.

Paid subscriptions stood at approximately 6.3 million on 31 March 2026: about 4.4 million on X Premium and Premium+, about 1.9 million on the SuperGrok tiers. The buyout debt travelled with the company — a US$6,705 million first-lien term loan taken by X Corp. in 2022, plus a US$4,741 million B-3 term loan drawn in February 2025.

Key Events

• 21 March 2006: The first post. Public launch followed on 15 July.
• April 2007: Twitter, Inc. incorporated in Delaware; IPO on the NYSE as TWTR in November 2013.
• 27 October 2022: Musk's acquisition closes at $54.20 a share in cash, about US$44 billion.
• July 2023: The service is renamed X. Meta had launched Threads into the disruption on 5 July.
• 12 July 2024: The European Commission issues preliminary findings of DSA breaches over the blue checkmark, the ad repository and researcher data access.
• August 2024: X sues the World Federation of Advertisers and its GARM initiative; GARM ceases operations on 9 August.
• 28 March 2025: xAI acquires X.
• 5 December 2025: The Commission imposes a EUR 120 million fine, the first non-compliance decision under the DSA; it is challenged in the General Court of the EU on 16 February 2026.
• 2 February 2026: SpaceX completes its acquisition of xAI.
• 20 March 2026: In Pampena v. Musk, a jury finds two statements Musk made in May 2022, while the purchase was pending, violated Section 10(b); partial judgment against him personally follows on 3 April.
• 29 July 2026: X and the WFA end their litigation.

Key Metrics

• Twitter, Inc., year ended December 2021 (last full disclosure): revenue US$5,077.5 m / loss from operations US$492.7 m / net loss US$221.4 m / over 7,500 employees
• Q4 2021 average mDAU: 217 million, of which 38 million in the United States
• SpaceX AI segment, FY2025: US$3,201 m, of which advertising US$1,844 m
• Grok and X combined: over 1.3 billion accounts active in the twelve months to 31 March 2026; approximately 550 million MAUs (about 520 million at 31 December 2025); roughly 350 million posts a day; approximately 117 million MAUs used Grok's AI features
• Paid subscribers at 31 March 2026: approximately 6.3 million

mDAU and MAU are not the same measure. The first is Twitter, Inc.'s daily count; the second is SpaceX's monthly count across Grok and X together, and the two cannot be compared directly. No company-reported figure for X alone has been published since the acquisition, so most numbers in circulation are third-party estimates or remarks by executives.

Influence and Criticism

Regulatory pressure has concentrated in Europe. On 5 December 2025 the European Commission fined X EUR 120 million in the first non-compliance decision taken under the Digital Services Act, upholding three findings: that the paid blue checkmark is a deceptive design, that the advertisement repository does not meet the DSA's requirements, and that researcher access to public data is inadequate. SpaceX's S-1 records that the fine fell on the Irish entity XIUC, on X, on x.AI and on Musk personally, and that it was challenged in the General Court of the European Union on 16 February 2026. Two Dutch collective actions also continue: SDBN's 2023 case over the MoPub bidding exchange, and SOMI's, brought in August 2024 on behalf of roughly 7.8 million Dutch users.

The conflict with advertisers ran through litigation to a settlement. X sued the WFA and GARM in August 2024; GARM shut down on 9 August; a US federal court dismissed the suit in March 2026 for failure to demonstrate antitrust injury; X appealed; and on 29 July 2026 the two sides ended the case, with the WFA saying it will not form or restart GARM or anything similar (TechCrunch). From the advertisers' side that confirms a freedom to choose where to spend; from X's side, part of the claim that its revenue base was thinned by political judgement was rejected on the record.

The deeper change is in ownership. A venue where public speech and political process collect is now a division of an unlisted space and defence company, and neither X's user numbers nor its revenue can be verified from outside. Moving from a listed company with disclosure obligations to a subsidiary under one individual's control matters more, for this platform, than the change of name.