The effort of Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, to acquire Twitter has paid off. Last week, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX launched a hostile takeover bid that put the company’s board and management in crisis mode.
This Monday, finally, Elon Musk bought Twitter for 44 billion dollars, 54.20 dollars per share in cash, and has promised to make changes to the platform.
Musk issued his own statement on the purchase, saying he hopes to unlock the social media giant’s full potential.
The pre-purchase agreement had been fueled by speculation about what it might mean for the future of the social network. While the sale initially seemed unlikely, the board began to take it more seriously each time Musk revealed details about how he would finance the purchase.
With 83 million followers on Twitter, Musk is an avid user of the service, but also one of its strongest critics. In fact, the acquisition was based on the belief that Twitter “is not living up to its potential as a platform for free expression.”
In March, Musk presented a survey to his followers, asking if users believed that Twitter protected free speech. According to the CEO of SpaceX, approximately 70 percent of the two million respondents answered no.
During a TED talk, Earlier this month, the billionaire re-emphasized that his goal is to bolster freedom of expression on the platform and that he would work to unlock Twitter’s extraordinary potential, opening it up rather than moderating it.
Freedom of expression is the basis of a functional democracy and Twitter is the digital public square where vital issues for the future of humanity are debated.
How did Musk pay for Twitter?
With a net worth of $270 billion, while Musk is the world’s richest person, he has declared that he has “enough assets.”
In Thursday’s SEC filing, Musk stated that he obtained more than $25 billion in debt financing through Morgan Stanley Senior Funding and other financial institutions. In addition, he personally committed about $21 billion in equity financing.
I invested in Twitter because I believe in its potential to be the platform for freedom of expression around the world. And I believe that freedom of expression is a social imperative for a functioning democracy. However, since making my investment, I now realize that the company will not prosper or meet this social imperative in its current form. Twitter must be transformed into a private company.
The purchase culminates a tumultuous relationship between Musk and Twitter and raises questions about how this could change the social network’s trajectory. Twitter has struggled in the past to grow users and ad sales while competing with larger companies like Facebook and Google. That’s why the network set a goal of reaching $7.5 billion in revenue and 315 million users by 2023.
Initially, Twitter leaders resisted Musk’s $44 billion offer. However, the SpaceX founder reportedly spent a weekend chatting with individual shareholders to convince them to accept the deal, with which he positions himself as the world’s richest man at the helm of one of the most influential social networks. of the planet.