Elon Musk, the CEO of electric vehicle company Tesla has acquired a 9 percent stake in micro-blogging platform Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey. The acquisition makes him the biggest outside shareholder in the social media stock.
Elon Musk is known for raising quite controversial topics, influencing cryptocurrencies and his wars with the US SEC. His purchase of Twitter shares comes shortly after the CEO and billionaire questioned Twitter’s position on free speech. He also that he might take the same path as Donald Trump and launch his social media app. “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?” the Tesla and SpaceX boss tweeted last week Friday asking his fans if a new platform that would rather be truly democratic is needed.
With the purchase, Elon Musk is now the owner of 73,486,938 Twitter shares, exactly 9.2 percent passive stake in the company according to the SEC 13G filing issued on Monday. Judging from Twitter’s closing price on Friday, Elon Musk’s stake in the company is worth about $2.89 billion.
Following the purchase, Twitter shares went up more than 25 percent in pre-market trading.
Commenting on the purchase, Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities said that “Musk could try to take a more aggressive stance here on Twitter. This eventually could lead to some sort of buyout. This makes sense given what Musk has at least been talking about, at least from a social media perspective.”
Elon Musk is a big deal on Twitter with a following of more than 80 million people. Over the years, his tweets have either influenced a topic or interest or landed him in trouble with the SEC.
For now, it is still unknown if the billionaire still has plans on launching his own social media platform.
Ibhadojemu Lucky Emmanuel is a graduate of Education and Economics from the University of Benin. He has a passion for tech and business and has been writing professionally for over a period of five years. He's written across various topics and segments and knew tech-business was it when he first stumbled on it. He has a great passion for music and arts, and wants to visit as many countries as he can someday.
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