Elon Musk is putting his money where his mouth is. The Tesla CEO purchased 9.2% of Twitter, worth nearly $3 billion, just days after threatening to launch his own social media platform. Musk criticized the company last week, accusing Twitter of failing to adhere to free speech principles.
Musk’s relationship with Twitter is long and complicated. The billionaire is one of the platform's most popular personalities, with over 80 million followers, yet he regularly criticizes the platform. Now, the Tesla boss will also own 9.2% of the company, four times the 2.25% holding of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.
As per The New York Times, Musk's purchase was made public on Monday in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He paid $2.89 billion, based on the closing price of Twitter’s stock price on Friday.
The stunning move comes days after the SpaceX boss was critical of Twitter’s content moderation policies and openly explored the idea of launching a rival platform. Musk decried the company's “failure to adhere to the free speech principles” in a series of tweets last week.
The billionaire implored his followers the be honest before posing a poll, asking users if they believed the Twitter algorithm should be open source. A few days later he polled his followers again, asking if they believed that Twitter “rigorously” adheres to the principles of free speech.
Musk hasn't revealed his plans, but it seems as if he has opted to improve Twitter rather than start a rival platform. Some reports suggest that he may continue to increase his stake in the company. Others suggest that the billionaire might attempt to acquire it outright.
Musk’s fortune dwarfs the near $40 billion valuation of Twitter, and if he wants to increase his stake in the company, he has the resources to do so. Forbes has the billionaire’s net worth pegged at roughly $270 billion, nearly $100 billion more than the world’s second-richest man, Jeff Bezos.
Musk may be worth billions, but he has kept good on his promise to offload his many mansions and now lives in a pre-fab tiny home on the grounds of SpaceX. In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Grimes said that Musk “lives at times below the poverty line,” and that he “wouldn’t even get a new mattress” when they discovered a hole on her side.
Source: Variety, The New York Times