Twitter said Monday it accepted Elon Musk’s offer to purchase the company for $44 billion. That gives the billionaire — who is the world’s wealthiest person — absolute control of the social media platform after the deal is approved.
Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44 billion
Musk paid the price he offered earlier in the month, $54.20 a share, Twitter said in a press release. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from Friday, Musk said he had secured funding for the deal.
Here’s what Musk said in a statement:
Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.
The deal is subject to shareholder approval, which is expected sometime in 2022.
No one knows yet what effect Musk owning Twitter will have on the social media platform. Or when any changes to it will occur. But Musk has made it clear in statements he thinks Twitter should ease up on moderating content and banning users.
In addition, he also hinted Twitter could remove ads from Twitter Blue subscriptions, incorporate Dogecoin as a payment option and add an “edit” button so people can modify what they tweeted.
Largest shareholder, brief board member
Musk became the biggest individual shareholder in Twitter earlier this month. And for a very short time he joined the company’s board of directors. But he pulled out of the position because it would bar him from owning more than 14.9% of the company. Instead, he made a bid to buy the company whole.
Soon after that, Twitter put in place a “poison pill” plan to fend off hostile takeovers by making them too expensive. And reportedly, some Twitter employees have been “dismayed” or “concerned” about Musk taking over the company.
