SpaceX filing: X's ad revenue was $1.8B in 2025, $1.7B in 2024, and $2.3B in 2023, below Twitter's $4B in 2021; X and Grok now have 6.3M active paid subscribers
SpaceX's IPO filing reveals ad revenue for X is still below what it was when Musk acquired Twitter, but it is growing again.
Context & Ripple Effects
The filing provides a clearer financial checkpoint for X after earlier coverage documented a prolonged post-takeover advertising decline and a lower implied employee-equity valuation. It also follows the integration of xAI into SpaceX and disclosure that X and Grok together reached 550M monthly active users, with 117M using Grok AI features.
The new figures show that advertising remains materially below Twitter’s earlier revenue level even as it has resumed growth from 2024 to 2025. The 6.3M paid-subscriber figure establishes subscriptions as a meaningful, though still separately disclosed, part of the combined X/Grok commercial model.
First-order effects
- X can point to renewed ad-revenue growth in 2025, but the filing simultaneously makes the gap versus Twitter’s 2021 advertising business explicit.
- Paid X and Grok subscriptions give the combined product another disclosed revenue lever alongside advertising, while placing more weight on retaining those subscribers.
Second-order effects
- Advertisers and agencies gain a more concrete basis for evaluating X’s recovery: growth is evident, but the platform has not rebuilt its prior advertising scale.
- The linkage of X distribution with Grok usage makes product conversion and paid-tier retention more important to xAI’s economics, particularly given the previously reported operating loss at xAI.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern persists, X’s business may evolve from an ad-led social platform toward a hybrid model in which advertising, subscriptions, and AI access are jointly managed rather than evaluated separately.
- The SpaceX-xAI combination increases pressure for clearer segment-level disclosure: investors will need to distinguish whether improvements come from X advertising, paid access, or AI-driven engagement.
The trend: This is one data point in the shift of large social platforms toward bundling advertising with subscriptions and AI features to diversify monetization.