(Image Source: Wikicommons)
Billionaire and head of Tesla and Space X, Elon Musk has purchased a 9.2% stake in Twitter Inc., becoming its largest shareholder owning $2.9 billion.
News of Musk’s stake in Twitter sent the stock surging, up 27% on Monday – its largest ever one-day gain.
The Tesla CEO has more than 80 million followers on Twitter’s social media platform, and has already raised the value of the company significantly following his acquisition of shares.
Previously, Musk has publicly railed against the toxic culture of censorship and deplatforming ‘cancel culture’ left behind by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and which has severely damaged the brand as a viable forum for free speech and expression.
CNBC reports…
Musk’s 73,486,938 shares make him Twitter’s largest shareholder, and were valued by CNBC at $2.89 billion at Friday’s closing price — a fraction of the world’s richest man’s $273 billion fortune, according to Bloomberg.
Musk has for years been one of Twitter’s most famous users, with a follower base that is now over 80 million. His tweets have landed him in hot water in the past, including a 2019 defamation trial after he called a British cave explorer a “pedo guy.” Musk was found not liable.
In 2018, he was charged $20 million in fines by the Securities and Exchange Commission for “misleading investors with tweets,” CNBC reported. The run-in with the SEC also resulted in Musk needing to have some of his tweets screened by Tesla’s lawyers.
In recent weeks, Musk has criticized Twitter for “failing to adhere to free speech principles,” and has even said he was considering building a new social media platform.
It remains to be seen what impact, if any, Musk’s ownership will have on the social network. Musk’s ownership stake is passive, meaning that he is a regular stockholder and does not have any involvement with the operation of the company.
However, analysts liked Wedbush’s Dan Ives have speculated that he could eventually attempt “some sort of buyout.”
“This makes sense given what Musk has at least been talking about, at least from a social media perspective,” Ives said Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”…
READ MORE TWITTER NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Twitter Files
SUPPORT OUR INDEPENDENT MEDIA PLATFORM – BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV
