Bill Ackman wants to monetize his X account to the tune of $25 billion

Why would someone worth over $9 billion spend so much of their time posting on X? For more money, obviously.

7/5/24 5:00PM

As someone with a self-diagnosed addiction to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, one of my favorite qualities about the site is that it levels the playing field between all of its users. Hedge fund managers, journalists, athletes, self-storage investors, degenerate crypto traders with profile pictures of pixelated primates, tech founders, and anonymous financial meme pages are engaged in a global conversation, and someone who would otherwise never set foot in the same room as a billionaire can elicit a multi-paragraph response from them on X.

One particular hedge fund manager loves chatting on X more than most: Pershing Square CEO and founder Bill Ackman. Ackman, who has 1.3 million followers, does not hesitate to chime in on the “current thing,” previously sharing long monologues advocating for JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon to run for president and calling for former Harvard President Claudine Gay to resign, with the latter having consequences in his personal life. After Ackman asked Harvard to review accusations that Gay had committed plagiarism, , Business Insider investigated Ackman’s wife, former MIT professor Neri Oxman, and found a “similar pattern of plagiarism” in her dissertation.

Why would someone worth ~$9.3 billion spend so much of their time posting on X, especially if that posting impacts their personal life? Perhaps because X is a great platform to fundraise from retail investors. From Bloomberg (emphasis ours):

The 58-year-old billionaire hedge fund manager told institutional investors in briefings ahead of Pershing Square USA Ltd.’s planned initial public offering that he would use his 1.3 million followers on social network X, formerly Twitter, to communicate his ideas, according to people familiar with the matter.
Ackman said the fund will mostly be focused on retail investors, with some institutional interest, according to one of the people. Pershing Square USA aims to raise $25 billion, Bloomberg News has reported — more than his hedge fund’s $19 billion in assets under management.

For what it’s worth, Ackman isn’t the first investor to attempt to monetize their X following. In 2020 and 2021, Social Capital founder and former “SPAC King“ Chamath Palihapitiya regularly tweeted “one-pagers” highlighting his investment theses for different SPACs, and the stock prices of the referenced companies often doubled (or more) as his followers poured money in. Palihapitiya made ~$750 million from SPACs before the SPAC boom ended in 2022, and he has since begun charging his followers $99 a month for a subscription to read his monthly deep dives.

Ackman stands to profit from a successful retail fundraise as well. While Pershing’s $15 billion Europe-listed closed-end fund charges a 1.5% management fee and a 20% performance fee, the US fund will only charge a flat 2% management fee, meaning that larger assets under management will generate larger guaranteed fee revenue. If Ackman hits his $25 billion target, Pershing Square stands to make $500 million per year.

Max Knoblauch4h

The Trump administration is reportedly planning a 50% made-in-America requirement for USMCA tariff relief

Qualifying for USMCA-related lower tariffs may soon require more US-made vehicle components, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal.

The Trump administration is reportedly planning to introduce a 50% US content requirement for vehicles covered by the trade pact to receive lower tariffs. The content would be measured by cost, according to the WSJ.

There currently isn’t any US-specific requirement for those lower tariff rates, but in order to receive preferential tariffs, vehicles are must contain at least 75% regional content (components made in North America). Per Reuters reporting, the Trump admin is seeking to raise the regional requirement to 82%.

These reported plans are subject to change as the US negotiates USMCA terms with Mexico over the next few months.

Overall, Tesla will likely have the easiest time qualifying for any stricter requirements. The automaker’s vehicles contained the highest amount of US/Canadian content in 2025, according to American University research. Ford, GM, and Stellantis all scored lower.

Notably: the underlying government data that many domestic content measurements rely on intentionally combines US and Canadian components, so it’s difficult to know exactly how much of any given vehicle is specifically US-made.

Exclusive | Trump Administration Wants Autos Under USMCA to Be at Least 50% Made in America

These reported plans are subject to change as the US negotiates USMCA terms with Mexico over the next few months.

Tom Jones10h

The $640,000 Luce makes the average Ferrari look like a bargain

Put aside the shape; put aside the smoothing out of Ferrari’s iconic sharp edges; put aside, even, the calls from former Chairman and President Luca Cordero di Montezemolo to “take the Prancing Horse off.” On the grounds of price alone, Luce detractors might have a point.

By now, many of us will have read the criticisms of Ferrari’s first fully electric vehicle, as the Luce — which was unveiled to the world earlier this week and promptly saw the company’s shares crash out in New York and Milan — gets subtly shaded by competitors online and not-so-subtly shaded by basically everyone else.

What makes all of this worse for Ferrari is that, even by the luxury car maker’s notoriously high standards, they’ve slapped a pretty hefty price tag on the Luce, and the company’s CEO, Benedetto Vigna, has already been forced to defend the €550,000 ($640,000) price point, saying yesterday that it’s “fair to pay for innovation,” per Reuters.

While Ferrari’s cars have been getting more expensive of late, as recently as 2022, Ferrari’s average revenue per car sold was around $340,000. At nearly twice that price, this new electric model is obviously proving a little much (visually, conceptually, and financially) for many loyal and long-standing fans of the Prancing Horse to stomach.