Back in the day, $44 billion was spent to buy Twitter, and the funding structure looked something like this: $13 billion came from bank loans, led by Morgan Stanley and a bunch of other banks. The collateral? Twitter itself. After the acquisition, the debt was directly added to the company’s books, with $1 billion in annual interest payments alone. $7.1 billion came from 19 external investors in exchange for equity—Larry Ellison threw in $1 billion himself, while Qatar’s sovereign fund, Sequoia, and a16z were all involved. Saudi Prince straight-up transferred $1.9 billion worth of old shares into the new company without even moving any cash. The remaining $20+ billion was Musk’s own money, which he raised throughout 2022 by selling Tesla stock—nearly $20 billion worth in total. So, this deal was 70% equity and 30% debt. And the final bill? Left to the company: X started off with $13 billion in debt. What followed in the next few years were layoffs, cost-cutting, and repeated fundraising efforts to refinance.