Elon Musk at one point suggested that he was thinking of launching his own social media platform, which he may yet do, but in the meantime he has decided to buy a piece of Twitter. This past Friday, the Tesla founder purchased almost 74-million Twitter shares, for a total of $2.89-billion, giving him an almost 10 percent stake in the company.
Twitter shares jumped from around $39.30 on Friday to a maximum of $48.60 earlier today, marking a nearly 26 percent increase. The news that Musk was now a major Twitter shareholder came courtesy of a regulatory filing made today.
Musk is not your typical billionaire, as he doesn’t have an extensive investment portfolio like all the other big names who breathe the same rarefied air. Most of his money is invested in Tesla, but he does own part of SpaceX, as well as Neuralink and The Boring Company.
With a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter, Musk becomes the platform’s biggest investors, with four times more shares than even Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, has in his portfolio. Dorsey stepped down as CEO in November of last year, replaced by Parag Agrawal, who says he is committed to increasing accountability at Twitter and also to help the company reach $7.5-billion in annual revenue, as well as a user base of 315-million by thee end of next year.
We don’t know how Elon Musk will influence this strategy, but given that he is now the company’s biggest shareholder, he will probably want to have a say when it comes to strategy. Based on some older posts and comments that he’s made on and about Twitter, it looks like the notion of free speech is a key priority for Musk, who has voiced his criticism of Twitter in the past, although he has not announced any plans yet.
