Elon Musk has purchased a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter according to a regulatory filing posted Monday.
The stake, which was worth about $2.89 billion based on Friday’s stock price, makes Musk the company’s largest individual shareholder, Bloomberg reported. Other major Twitter shareholders are mostly large funds from investment companies such as Vanguard and BlackRock.
Last week Musk publicly criticized Twitter for not being democratic enough. In a Twitter poll, he asked his followers whether they believe that Twitter “rigorously adheres” to the principle of free speech as “essential to a functional democracy.” He hinted that he has some sort of plan regarding Twitter, saying that the consequences of the poll “will be important.”
70.4% of respondents said no.
Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy.
Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 25, 2022
Musk said he is giving serious thought to the idea of building a new social media platform.
Am giving serious thought to this
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 27, 2022
With a 9.2 percent stake of Twitter the SpaceX founder will be able to influence Twitter’s decisions in the future. It also opens the door for a buyout in the future. “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; more aggressive ownership role of Twitter,” WedBush analyst Dan Ives tweeted on Monday.
The Tesla boss has more than 80 million followers and ranks in the top 10 most popular Twitter users globally.
The Elon halo effect saw shares in twitter soaring to as much as 26% in pre-market trading on the back of the news, adding more than $8bn to its $31.5bn market value before Musk’s interest was made public. After the stock price jump Musk’s shares are now worth about $3.6bn.
The 50-year-old is the richest man in the world with a personal fortune estimated at $289bn, almost $100bn more than the world’s next richest person, the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos.
