Elon Musk's bought a $3.5 billion stake in Twitter
Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk has purchased 9.2% of Twitter stock, spiking its valuation and making him the largest individual shareholder in the social media company. The amount he paid is not known, but the stake was worth $2.89 billion Friday before, following the announcement on Monday morning, it became worth $3.5 billion (thanks, CNN).
Musk purchased 73,486,938 Twitter shares on 14 March, per a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The filing did not include anything about Musk's future intentions for the company.
Interestingly enough, this purchase came a couple of weeks before Musk 'announced' he was thinking about establishing a new social media platform. He of course took to twitter while pondering this, writing on March 26:
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? https://t.co/aPS9ycji37March 26, 2022
The above tweet was followed by a poll, with Musk asking his 80.2 million followers whether they believed twitter adhered to the values of free speech. After just over two million votes were cast, 70.4% said no.
Musk is, far more than most CEOs, a regular social media user and on occasion something of a troll. He regularly tweets business and life updates, but these are mixed-in with gnomic utterances, memes, and outright shitposting. At times Musk has got into serious hot water, particularly when he tweeted asking if he should take Tesla private: which understandably sent the company's valuation zig-zagging, and resulted in the SEC taking action against him.
While that dispute has been settled, it's resulted in ongoing scrutiny and, as recently as February, Musk's lawyers were
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