A federal judge has ordered the unsealing of a previously redacted shareholder list for the parent company of Elon Musk’s X Corp., shedding light on the entities and individuals who backed Musk’s $44 billion takeover of the social media giant formerly known as Twitter.

In an Aug. 21 order, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston granted a motion filed in July by freelance journalist Jacob Silverman, who sought to intervene in an unrelated lawsuit brought against Musk by former Twitter employees, in which X Corp. filed a redacted shareholder list.

Silverman’s motion to intervene in the case aimed to get the X Corp. investor list unsealed. In this effort, he was backed by attorneys from the nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which argued in the filing that unsealing the shareholder list was in the public’s best interest.

The motion argued that there is strong public interest in transparency, particularly regarding the ownership of a major social media platform such as X, which plays a critical role in public discourse. It contended that both the First Amendment and common law presumptions of public access require information such as X Corp.’s shareholder list to be made available in order to ensure judicial integrity and to subject the influences shaping the platform’s operations to public scrutiny.

Attorneys for X Corp. opposed the unsealing of the shareholder names that were filed as part of a corporate disclosure statement in an unrelated lawsuit. Their motion in opposition argued that the court lacks jurisdiction to consider Silverman’s request, as the case was remanded more than a year ago. In addition, X Corp. argued that the court had already found good cause to seal the statement, claiming that unsealing would violate the privacy rights of individuals and entities involved and that the disclosure statement was not relevant to the merits of the case.

The judge sided with Silverman, writing in her order that the shareholder list “does not contain any scandalous information or trade secrets” and may be revealed for “public interest in understanding the judicial process.” She also argued that X Corp. “presented little more than conjecture in support of their position” that the investor list should remain hidden.

While the judge ordered that X Corp. must file an unredacted version of the corporate disclosure statement on the public docket by Sept. 4, an unredacted version of the statement featuring the investor list has already been entered into court records in substitution of the original statement that was filed on June 9, 2023.

The list includes big names such as Jack Dorsey, founder and former CEO of Twitter; rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs; and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. It also features major corporate players from Silicon Valley, such as Andreessen Horowitz, Gigafund, and Sequoia.

X Corp. did not respond to a request for comment, while the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press praised the judge’s decision.

“Reporters Committee attorneys are very pleased with the district court’s ruling, which vindicates not only the interest of our client, Mr. Silverman, but also the interest of the general public in knowing who owns X,” Katie Townsend, the Reporters Committee’s deputy executive director and legal director, said in a statement. “Corporate ownership information of this kind is routinely disclosed in civil litigation and, as the district court correctly concluded, there is no reason why it should have been sealed here.”

Silverman reacted to the ruling in a blog post.

“People should know who owns an important site for public discourse and whether its free-speech fundamentalist majority shareholder is doing business with censorious dictatorships,” he said.

The corporate disclosure statement was originally filed in a lawsuit brought by former Twitter employees alleging that Musk failed to pay them certain arbitration-related fees after he bought the company.