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CNN
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Investment giant Fidelity estimates the social media platform formerly known as Twitter is worth nearly 80% less than it was two years ago when Elon Musk bought it.

X is no longer publicly traded after Musk spent $44 billion to take it private in October 2022.

However, Fidelity does disclose the value of its shares in X, and these estimates serve as a closely watched barometer of the company’s overall health.

At the end of August, those shares were worth just $4.2 million, according to a Sunday filing from Fidelity’s Blue Chip Growth Fund.

This new estimate represents a 24% decline in value from Fidelity’s estimate at the end of July. And it represents a staggering 79% decline from the $19.66 million that Fidelity estimated the shares were worth in October 2022, when Musk took over Twitter.

Fidelity’s new valuation implies that X is currently worth just $9.4 billion – a far cry from the $44 billion paid to Musk. Other investors might value X differently.

Analysts say Fidelity’s falling price for

Fidelity declined to comment on individual companies.

X did not respond to a request for comment.

“Musk clearly overpaid for this asset,” Dan Ives, managing director and senior equity analyst at Wedbush Securities, told CNN in an email.

Ives said he believes Twitter was actually worth about $30 billion when Musk bought it, and today the value is closer to $15 billion. He said that while engagement on X was “strong,” advertising pressure continued.

Under Musk’s leadership, some advertisers have raised concerns about extreme content on the platform that they don’t want their brands associated with.

A recent global survey by Kantar found that a net 26% of marketers plan to reduce their spending on X in the next year, the largest decline of any major global advertising platform. Only 4% of advertisers said they believe X ads provide “brand safety” (the assurance that their ads won’t appear near extreme content), compared to 39% for Google.

In November, Musk faced a backlash from brands, some of which increased their spending on

Musk later apologized for his “stupidest” social media post ever. However, during this apology, Musk also said to the fleeing advertisers: “F**k yourself.”

But X remains a major player in social media under Musk’s leadership.

The company said it had 570 million monthly active users in the second quarter, up 6% year over year.

However, research firm Similarweb has noted a decline in engagement.

X had 73.5 million monthly active users on iOS and Android combined in the U.S. in August, according to Similarweb data shared with CNN. That represents a decline of nearly 11% year-over-year and a decline of 20% since October 2022.

Similarweb also found that U.S. web traffic to X.com in August was lower than to Twitter.com before Musk bought it. However, Similarweb said that X’s traffic numbers were slightly higher outside the United States.

Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, said he doesn’t think X’s value has fallen nearly as much as Fidelity’s estimates suggested.

“Fidelity was overly aggressive. They are essentially cleaning up the investment,” Munster told CNN.

Munster said he believes X and the data the company has access to will be worth more in the long run than the $44 billion Musk paid for Twitter.

“If you want to understand what people are thinking in real time, Twitter is the best source for it. And that’s valuable,” Munster said.

This is particularly valuable because X-data helped train Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI, Musk’s increasingly valuable AI startup.

X has emerged as a unique angle for Grok, which Munster says has the potential to become Musk’s largest source of wealth.

“When Musk bought Twitter, investors didn’t know we would take off with AI as quickly as we did,” Munster said. “Musk’s purchase of Twitter is more a case of luck than wisdom.”