Elon Musk Offers to Buy Twitter for $43 Billion: 'It's a High Price and Your Shareholders Will Love It' The Tesla CEO shared a new SEC filing via Twitter early Thursday morning.
By Emily Rella Edited by Jessica Thomas
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What started as friendly banter that seemed to turn into a lucrative and cohesive partnership between Elon Musk and Twitter has now become a hostile clash of power that just took another pricey turn.
Earlier this month, the Tesla CEO purchased around 9.2% of Twitter's total shares, making him the largest shareholder in the company and prompting Twitter's CEO Parag Agrawal to offer Musk a seat on the Twitter board, which he later rejected.
Musk's new position of power within Twitter has sparked a less-than-thrilled response from Twitter employees, who reported feeling "stressed out" by the news, while other shareholders even took it so far as to sue Musk for the delay in publicly disclosing his acquisition of Twitter shares to the SEC.
Now, Musk is threatening to completely wipe out the middlemen by buying Twitter and all of its shares in a deal that would be valued at $43 billion, per an SEC filing from this week.
Related: Elon Musk Will No Longer Join Twitter Board
"I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy," Musk told Twitter board chairman Brett Taylor in a letter via the SEC filing. "However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company … Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it."
Musk proposed buying Twitter's shares for $54.20 per share in cash, which he says is a 54% premium from the day before he began buying Twitter stock. He said his offer is "best and final" and warned that he would "reconsider" his shareholder position if his offer is not accepted.
"It's a high price and your shareholders will love it," Musk told Taylor.
The Tesla CEO tweeted out the SEC filing to his 81.6 million followers alongside the text "I made an offer."
Unsurprisingly, the Twitterverse went wild upon hearing the news, some in favor and many others, not so much.
Elon Musk is willing to do what only he can do. He is putting a substantial chunk of his vast fortune on the line to save free speech in America. In times like this, we need men like this to help rescue our society and our civilization @elonmusk
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) April 14, 2022
The next time you think youre overreacting, remember that Elon Musk is really willing to pay $43 billion just to prevent people from laughing at him on Twitter
— Shiv Ramdas Traing To Rite Buk (@nameshiv) April 14, 2022
Elon Musk is why to abolish billionaires.
— Anand Giridharadas @ The.Ink (@AnandWrites) April 14, 2022
Asking them to chip in their fair share isn't enough. Regulating them isn't enough.
When people are allowed to acquire this much concentrated influence, they will inevitably manspread economic power into every other form of power.
Elon Musk making a play for Twitter out of his petty cash drawer is one more example of why the pooling of so much wealth in the hands of a few is a societal disease.
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) April 14, 2022
Elon Musk is worth $302.1 billion, nearly twice the second richest man. Twitter has a market value of $37.6 Billion.
— Michael Quinn Sullivan (@MQSullivan) April 13, 2022
If Musk bought Twitter, even if the value dropped to $0, he would still be the richest man in the world.
But if he owned Twitter, it would be wildly profitable.
Either way, Twitter stock shot up a whopping 12% in premarket trading on Thursday, which once again puts all eyes on Musk and the frequent accusations that the billionaire manipulates the market via his Tweets.
Related: Tesla Has Reportedly Been Using Bots Since 2013 to Manipulate Stock Prices
A report by the Los Angeles Times this week found that thousands of Twitter bots had been created over the past decade that praised and positively framed Tesla, which correlated directly with the rise in value of Tesla shares at the time.
Musk has also been under fire for influencing the valuation of certain cryptocoins, particularly Bitcoin and Dogecoin, based on his commentary on the two currencies on the social media platform.
As of Thursday morning, Musk's estimated net worth was $273.6 billion.
