SpaceX’s Earnings Show Elon Wiped Out Two-Thirds Of Twitter’s Ad Business

from the setting-money-on-fire dept

When SpaceX filed for its IPO, we went through the S-1 to point out just how far off the mark Elon Musk’s predictions about his Twitter takeover turned out to be. Indeed, the failure of Twitter as a business was so catastrophic, Musk had to hide it by merging all his Xs together: he had xAI buy X (formerly Twitter), and then had SpaceX buy xAI. But when Musk was buying Twitter and needed investors, he made bold promises about how he would succeed — promises the media and his investors treated as perfectly reasonable. He said he would take Twitter’s ad revenue from $4.5 billion in 2021 to $12 billion in 2027 (and then also many more billions in subscription revenue).

Now that SpaceX is a public company, he has to report some of that revenue, though it’s all merged and buried in footnotes. But there’s enough info in there to show that advertising revenue is way, way below what it was when he took over the site. And it’s shrinking.

In the 10-Q, all of X’s revenue is now (misleadingly) labeled “AI” revenue, but even then the reporting has to admit ad revenue took a big hit, dropping $160 million compared to the first half of 2025 (which was already way, way, way lower than when Elon took over the site), going from $870 million in 2025 to $710 million in the first half of 2026. The company tries to claim that this decrease in ad revenue is because they “transitioned to a new advertising platform which impacted ad sales for a short period of time.” Which is a curious explanation, given that on the analyst call, CFO Bret Johnsen credited that very same “overhauled” ad-tech platform for the very slight quarter-over-quarter uptick in ad revenue. The same overhaul apparently both tanked the business and rescued it, depending on which direction the number was moving.

And even the claim that the overhaul increased ad revenue is suspicious given that if you compare the 2nd quarter from last year to this year… ad revenue dropped from $426 million to $367 million, year over year. Some overhaul.

I kinda think that if your transition to a new ad platform decreases ad sales by $160 million, someone fucked up badly somewhere. Especially when it’s a nearly 20% year-over-year drop.

Let’s break all this down: In the second quarter of 2022, the last full quarter before Elon took over, Twitter brought in $1.08 billion in ad revenue. In the second quarter of 2026, X brought in $367 million. That’s $713 million a quarter, gone. Elon has wiped out two-thirds of Twitter’s ad business over the exact period in which he promised investors he’d nearly triple it.

And it’s not for lack of trying. Over the past year X has made a ton of experiments and revamps to improve the experience (though the main person in charge of all that, just left). I’d argue that the company was just rebuilding all of the stuff Elon killed after first taking over the company, but none of it has brought advertisers back.

Turns out that telling advertisers to go fuck themselves… and then suing other advertisers for not advertising… doesn’t make anyone want to advertise with you.

Still, it seems like someone should be pointing out how far off the mark Elon has been. He promised twelve billion dollars in ad revenue within the next year. That’s three billion a quarter. X just did $367 million — about an eighth of the pace, and shrinking. You can talk all you want about his rockets and robots, he’s not magically going to grow ad revenue 700% in the next 18 months.

So, tell me again how Elon is a business genius?

Filed Under: advertising revenue, elon musk, revenue

Companies: spacex, twitter, x, xai