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Elon Musk buys Twitter in historical $44 billion deal, takes company private, plans to make algorithms open source for the “digital town square”
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” said Musk in a statement included with the release. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
Musk laid out his plan for funding the deal in an SEC filing on Thursday, which includes $25.5 billion in loans and $21 billion in personal equity. Analysts believe the loans could cost Twitter as much as $1 billion a year in servicing fees, or roughly 20 percent of the company’s annual revenue.
Musk has been outspoken in his criticism of Twitter moderation, describing himself as a “free speech absolutist” and raising concerns over how the platform would moderate under his control. “It’s just really important that people have the reality and the perception that they’re able to speak freely within the bounds of the law,” Musk said in an interview with Chris Anderson during TED 2022. “I think broadly, the civilizational risk is decreased the more we can increase the trust of Twitter as a public platform.”
Musk originally offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share on April 14th. The offer followed Musk’s disclosure of acquiring a 9.2 percent stake, a move that made him Twitter’s largest individual shareholder at the time. At one time Musk was offered a seat on the company’s board of directors but the deal soon fell apart, as a seat on the board would prevent him from buying more than a 14.9 percent stake in Twitter.
The deal, which was unanimously approved by Twitter’s board, is expected to close this year. It comes after Musk revealed last week he had lined up $46.5 billion in financing to acquire the company, an apparent turning point that forced Twitter’s board to seriously consider the deal. The board met Sunday to evaluate Musk’s offer. Twitter stock was up nearly 6% following the announcement of the deal, hovering around $51.84, just shy of the offer price. The deal is pending approval from shareholders and regulators.
“I don’t even own a place right now, I’m literally staying at friends’ places,” Musk said during the interview, shared on TED’s YouTube on Sunday. “If I travel to the Bay Area, which is where most of Tesla’s engineering is, I basically rotate through friends’ spare bedrooms.”
Musk, a father of seven, has an estimated net worth of $270.1 billion, according to Forbes. Still, Grimes – the mother of two of his children – admitted during a recent Vanity Fair interview they lived in a “very insecure $40,000 house.” The singer dug further into Musk’s money matters, saying at one point he had a mattress with a hole in it and didn’t want to buy a new one.
She said their house had “no security” and that she ate “peanut butter for eight days in a row.” During this interview, Grimes revealed she and Musk welcomed their second baby – secretly – and that although it was reported they had broken up, that wasn’t entirely true. They’re “fluid” and live in separate houses, she said.
It is unclear where Grimes lives now, but during his TED interview, Musk said where he lives is generally at other people’s houses. Musk dropped this detail when answering a question about the wealth disparity in the U.S. between average Americans and billionaires like himself. “For sure, it would be very problematic if I was spending billions of dollars a year in personal consumption, but that is not the case,” he said. “It’s not as though my personal consumption is high,” he continued, admitting there is one exception: his private plane. “But if I don’t use the plane then I have less hours to work,” he said. Musk’s claims of a minimalistic lifestyle go even further back. In May 2020 he tweeted: “I am selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house.”
