Not only Elon Musk thought of buying Twitter; crypto millionaire and CEO of the FTX exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried, “was interested” in acquiring the social network back in mid-March 2022, according to a Business Insider report.
In the article, published on September 29, journalists refer to private documents disclosed in the middle of the legal battle between Musk and Twitter, that had been unleashed after the businessman suspended the acquisition negotiations in July.
According to the report, in March, the philosopher and close adviser to Bankman-Fried, Will MacAskill texted Musk and mentioned the possibility of a joint effort to buy the social network:
“I’m not sure if this is what you have in mind, but my collaborator Sam Bankman-Fried has been potentially interested in buying it and then improving it for the world for a while. If you want to talk to him about a possible joint effort in that direction.”
In response, Musk asked if Bankman-Fried had “enormous amounts of money,” and MacAskill claimed that SBF had $24 billion and was willing to spend between $8 billion and $15 billion on the acquisition. Later in April, MacAskill discussed the funding with Morgan Stanley’s head of global tech investment banking, Michael Grimes. The latter told Musk that the crypto entrepreneur could put up $5 billion to close the deal, calling him an “ultra-genius and builder of works.” But Musk showed no significant interest, noting that he did not want to “have a laborious blockchain debate” with Bankman-Fried.
These private negotiations apparently came to nothing, as neither Bankman-Fried personally nor FTX appeared on a list of potential co-investors for the acquisition, which included the likes of Binance, Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity and Sequoia Capital. In the last known text message between Musk and Bankman-Fried, on May 5, the former asked, “Sorry, who sent this message?”
To justify his decision to walk away from the deal, Musk accused Twitter of hiding the actual number of fake/bot accounts, which he estimates exceed 5% of monetizable daily active users, the mark claimed by the social network’s management. The first hearing on Twitter’s lawsuit will be held on October 17. The company intends to force Musk to complete the acquisition in court.
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