Documents Show Elon Musk’s X Revenue Has Officially Gone Down

By now, everyone’s pretty much aware of Elon Musk’s plans to turn X (formerly Twitter) into an “everything app.” One of the major pillars of Musk’s reimagining of X includes a payment platform much like Venmo or PayPal.

New documents obtained by Bloomberg reveal not only Musk’s financial service vision for X but also just how much the company has struggled financially since he acquired it in October 2022.

The new documents are prepared by X and have been submitted to state regulators as X looks to receive money transmitter licenses, something required for anyone seeking to offer financial services of this kind. These documents also give the public its first official glimpse of the company since Musk took over.

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X’s Revenue Plumetted By Almost 40 Percent

Now that X is no longer publicly traded, there’s a lot of information that hasn’t been made public. Most reports regarding X’s revenue troubles, for instance, have come from internal leaks.

However, these new documents make it official. According to X, the company’s revenue has gone down since Musk took charge of the company. In the first six months of 2023, the first full year in which Musk controlled the company. X’s revenue came down by almost 4-% from the same period in 2023. The company raked in $1.48 billion during that time period. Moreover, X lost $456 million in the first quarter of 2023.

Most of this revenue drop happened due to X’s advertiser woes. Before Elon Musk's takeover, when the platform was known as Twitter, advertising generally accounted for a whopping 90 percent of X’s revenue. Under Musk, advertisers fled due to platform changes and various controversies involving the owner, so ad revenue declined.

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X Could Soon Launch Payment Services

X seems to be planning to launch a payment services system on its social media platform. The company submitted documents to 11 states as it looks to obtain money transmitter licenses. The company wants to offer users a PaypPal/Venmo-like feature called X Payments. The plan is to allow users to pay other users, purchase products and services, and store money through their X account.

Musk has shared several ideas to make up for the loss of advertising revenue. For instance, X released the X premium subscription plan as well as a subscription service for creators.

According to these documents, X plans to utilize the X Payments service mainly in order to achieve “increased participation and engagement” on the platform. X Payments does not plan to charge any fees for most of its services.