The world’s richest person, Elon Musk buys a $3 billion stake of 9.2% in Twitter and is now the platform’s largest shareholder.
Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO purchased 73.5 million shares, according to a regulatory filing Monday.
Musk has been raising questions about the ability to express oneself freely on Twitter, tweeting last month about free speech and the social media platform.
“Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” he tweeted.
The other side of the coin is so-called free speech is giving rise to hate speech and a netizen tweeted, “My name is Jackson Mulholland & I’m one of many ppl here working at
@Twitter in charge of developing terms & conditions for users. We’re not stripping away “free speech”, we’re protecting users from bullies, bigots, & spam. I refuse to work with or for @elonmusk . I’m resigning.”
My name is Jackson Mulholland & I'm one of many ppl here working at @Twitter in charge of developing terms & conditions for users. We're not stripping away "free speech", we're protecting users from bullies, bigots, & spam. I refuse to work with or for @elonmusk. I'm resigning🏳️🌈
— J. Mulholland (@MulhollandL0ver) April 4, 2022
Musk oblivious to the other side of free speech said he was “giving serious thought” to creating a new social media platform.
Also last month, Musk asked a federal judge to nullify a subpoena from securities regulators and throw out a 2018 court agreement in which Musk had to have someone pre-approve his posts on Twitter.
Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, thinks Musk may eventually seek to buy an extensive piece of Twitter, which would give him more influence to push for change at the company.
He said in a note, “It looks like Elon has his eyes laser set on Twitter, and we would expect this passive stake as just the start of broader conversations with the Twitter board/management that could ultimately lead to an active stake and a potential more aggressive ownership role of Twitter.”
He went on to say, “For Tesla purposes, we view this move as Musk just further building out his tentacles, and we are not worried in any way around Musk ‘taking his eye off the ball’ with Tesla/SpaceX.”
Of note:
Musk owns 73,486,938 shares of Twitter, which denotes a 9.2% passive stake in the company, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission 13, G filing released Monday.
The stake is worth $2.89 billion, based on Twitter’s closing price on Friday.
The Musk buy comes less than two weeks after Musk slammed the company, polling people on Twitter about whether Twitter adheres to free speech principles.
Elon Reeve Musk is the wealthiest person in the world, with a fortune worth $273 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index and the Forbes real-time billionaires list. He was born on June 28, 1971, to a Canadian mother and South African father, and raised in Pretoria, South Africa.
Musk is an entrepreneur, investor, and business magnate. He is the founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer at SpaceX; early-stage investor, CEO, and Product Architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; and co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI.