The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, spent almost $3 billion to secure a 9.2 per cent stake in Twitter, making the billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX the largest shareholder of the social media platform.
Filings made with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday show that Musk now owns just over 73 million shares in Twitter, a platform on which Musk has over 80 million followers; the billionaire businessman has the eighth most-followed account on Twitter.
If the billionaire had bought the shares at Friday’s closing price, Musk’s purchase would have cost approximately US$2.89 billion. Trading early Monday following the news of the purchase saw Twitter’s shares rocket up as much as 26 per cent, adding another $8 billion to Twitter’s market value.
Musk’s shares are now worth around $3.6 billion, meaning the billionaire added around $700 million to his net worth in one weekend.
Musk’s investment is classified as a passive stake, meaning that he won’t take an active role in running the social media giant, but some analysts are saying that this could be the start of Musk playing a more aggressive role in Twitter’s management.
Just last week, the billionaire tech founder said he was “giving serious thought” to building a social media platform of his own.
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The purchase of the 9.2 per cent stake means that Musk owns about quadruple the amount Twitter founder Jack Dorsey owns (2.25 per cent) in the company he started.
Musk is often in the news with Twitter-related antics. In 2018, he was forced to resign as chairman of Tesla after an SEC investigation. The probe was prompted when Musk tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 a share.
The billionaire was also embroiled in a defamation lawsuit after calling a British cave explorer who helped rescue a group of boys stuck in a cave complex in Thailand a pedophile on Twitter.
Musk also recently welcomed his second child with music star Grimes — his seventh child overall.
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