In one of the biggest deals in the tech history of the world in the last two decades, mercurial revolutionary mobility entrepreneur Elon Musk struck a deal Monday to buy Twitter for $44 billion.
The very decision puts an end to a complete with hostile takeover threats before delivering him personal control of Twitter. It is one of the world’s biggest deals in the tech world, billionaire Elon Musk has taken control of Twitter.
The publicly traded firm will now become a private company owned by Elon Musk, who negotiated a purchase price of $54.20 per share. The deal comes just four days after Musk unveiled a financing package to back the acquisition. 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.
According to Elon Musk, the social media company needs to go private because it can “neither thrive nor serve” free speech in its current state.”
Related to finding the funding for the acquisition, Washington Post had reported that Elon Musk is working with investment bank Morgan Stanley to find potential investors to shore up financing for the offer. Sources said Elon Musk first focused on raising debt and has not yet begun to seek equity financing for his bid.
Elon Musk said in a statement released by Twitter.”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.
At the same time, like other platforms, Twitter’s community standards restrict legally protected speech in a way that disproportionately affects frequently silenced speakers. And also like other platforms, Twitter routinely removes content that does not violate its standards, including sexual expression, counterspeech, and certain political speech.
The Tesla CEO has previously criticised the social media giant publicly, polling people on Twitter last month about whether the company abides by free speech principles. He also said he was considering building a new social media platform.
Elon Musk had posted on his Twitter account stating that he hopes that even his worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.
The US entrepreneur Elon Musk had made clear that Twitter acquisition is not a decision focused on profit making. He publicly articulated his business plan for Twitter and made it clear that there is a need for reversing Twitter’s moderation policies and providing additional transparency about how its algorithms work.
It should also be noted that on Saturday, Elon Musk had posted a rather distasteful tweet about Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, apparently in response to Gates shorting Tesla. The tweet has more than a million likes. He had then joked that the ‘shadow ban council’ was likely reviewing his tweet.
The 50-year-old entrepreneur succeded in bidding for the Twitter as had been building up a stake in the company and owns more than 9% of Twitter, making him on of its single-biggest individual shareholder.
