Elon Musk Back To Buying Twitter Now?
Filings with the SEC reveal Elon Musk may finally be making good on his pledge to acquire Twitter.
According to an SEC filing, Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s attempts to purchase Twitter for reportedly $44 billion may come to fruition. THR reported that Musk’s team sent a letter on October 3rd, 2022, laying out the CEO’s plans to “proceed to closing of the transaction contemplated by April 25th, 2022 Merger Agreement.” The filing revealed Musk has asked for a stay of action in the social media giant’s legal proceedings against him.
We thought for sure Elon Musk had given up on purchasing Twitter. During the tech CEO’s birthday, he reached over 100 million Twitter followers. Yet, Musk didn’t celebrate the occasion on social media, which was uncharacteristic of him at the time.
Despite having owned more than a 9% stake in Twitter, the relationship between Elon Musk and the social media platform has been tumultuous, to say the least. The SpaceX founder insisted that the social media platform prove bots and other fake accounts made up less than 5% of the total users. The accusation came as the platform insisted that fake accounts were not an issue.
Elon Musk even tweeted a link to a Reuters article about the platform’s deal being temporarily suspended due to the debacle. Things became even more heated after Twitter announced a hiring freeze amidst Musk’s plans to purchase the platform. Twitter spokesperson Catherine Hill explained the decision, saying it was putting a hold on hiring except for roles related to business-critical nature.
Then on May 19th, 2022, a bombshell report from Business Insider revealed that Elon Musk allegedly paid $250,000 to a flight attendant after allegedly exposing himself to her. The former Space X flight attendant reportedly hired a lawyer and agreed to a $250,000 settlement. Musk, of course, declined to comment on the story at the time.
After the report, many thought Elon Musk’s dreams of purchasing the social media platform went up in smoke. However, it appears he managed to keep the wheels in motion and even claimed that he wants to see at least a billion users on Twitter. Musk made the outlandish claim during a town hall meeting that the tech billionaire held with Twitter employees.
Bloomberg was the first to report that Elon Musk sent a letter to Twitter offering to purchase the platform at $54.20 a share. While the Space X founder previously agreed to buy the company at that share price, Musk later tried backing out from the deal he had with Twitter, pointing to an unaccounted number of spam accounts on the platform.
On Tuesday, Twitter announced that it would go ahead with the sale despite there being a lawsuit against the two parties over Elon Musk’s unaccounted spam account accusation. CNN reported in July 2022 that a lawyer representing the Space X founder sent out a letter that claimed Musk was backing out of the deal because Twitter was “in material breach of multiple provisions” of what the two parties initially settled on. In the letter, Musk claimed that Twitter had failed to provide important information per their deal. Meanwhile, Twitter had previously stated that it has cooperatively shared information with Musk.
