Larry Ellison’s $1B Twitter Bet Has Nearly Tripled After SpaceX IPO
It started with a text message. In October 2022, when Elon Musk was rounding up investors for his controversial $44 billion Twitter acquisition, he reached out to Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. Ellison’s reply was as casual as it gets: “One billion dollars… or any amount you suggest.” No due diligence. No term sheets. Just a ten-word text and the largest single equity cheque in the deal.
That Larry Ellison Twitter investment has now become one of the most quietly spectacular bets in recent venture history. Ellison never cashed out. As Inc. reports, his stake rolled from Twitter into X after the rebrand, then into xAI when X and the AI company merged in March 2025, and finally into SpaceX following the historic all-stock merger in February 2026 what CNBC called the largest private merger in any industry, ever. At the time, xAI was valued at $250 billion, up from $80 billion at the X merger.
Now that SpaceX has gone public, the Larry Ellison Twitter investment is worth an estimated $2.7 billion nearly tripling from his original $1 billion outlay. X shareholders, including Ellison, collectively own approximately 5 percent of SpaceX, according to Bloomberg. The company listed at a $135 per share IPO price, implying a valuation in the range of $1.75 to $2 trillion, which Reuters described as the biggest American stock market debut ever.
For Ellison, the bet was apparently never about the numbers. “This company has great potential,” he said at the time, “and it would be interesting to be involved.” Three years and a winding path through three different companies later, it turned out to be a lot more than interesting.
