X is worth 71% less now after Elon Musk took over and burned its bridges with advertisers: Fidelity

• It's been more than a year since Elon Musk bought Twitter.
• The billionaire paid $44 billion for the platform in October 2022, which he later renamed X.

Elon Musk's X has lost over 71% of its value since the mercurial billionaire acquired it in October 2022, says asset manager Fidelity.

Fidelity says the company is now worth 71.5% less than when Musk bought it, according to an Axios story published Sunday. Musk had paid $44 billion to take over the company, then known as Twitter.

This isn't the first time Fidelity has revalued the company.

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The mutual fund giant owns an equity stake in X but has been routinely lowering the stake's value since Musk's acquisition, per Reuters.

Back in May, Fidelity estimated X to be only worth about $15 billion, a third of what Musk had paid, per Bloomberg.

2023 was a rocky year for X and its advertiser relationships.

In July, Musk said in an X post that the company was in a rough financial spot because of a huge dip in advertising.

"We're still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load," Musk wrote.

And in November, companies such as Disney and IBM pulled their ads from X after Musk seemingly endorsed an antisemitic post.

Musk later apologized for the antisemitic post, but slammed the advertisers for boycotting his company.

"If somebody is going to try to blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself. Go. Fuck. Yourself," Musk said in an interview at The New York Times Dealbook Summit in November.

Musk, however, later acknowledged that the advertiser boycott could "kill the company."

"What this advertising boycott is going to do, it's gonna kill the company. And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company," Musk said at the same event.

Representatives for X and Fidelity did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.