According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Elon Musk has made an offer to buy Twitter outright for $43.4 billion. This Thursday, the Tesla CEO and billionaire made a financial offer to Twitter (TWTR.N), claiming that the social media giant needed to be taken private in order to expand and become a platform for free speech.
“Twitter has amazing potential,” Musk said in a letter to Twitter’s board on Wednesday. Musk is now the company’s second-largest shareholder after recently purchasing Twitter equities for up to 9.2 percent. “I’ll get it unlocked.”
Musk offered $54.20 per share of Twitter stock in his Wednesday letter, equating to $41.3 billion — slightly more than Twitter’s current market cap of $36.7 billion.
“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Musk said in the proposal. “However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.” As CNN notes, the offer was made public in a regulatory filing this Thursday.
The news site notes that Twitter has said it received Musk’s offer and will decide whether it is in the best interests of shareholders to accept or continue to operate as a publicly traded company.
Elon Musk has a net worth of $278 billion dollars. As previously reported, he has become the world’s richest individual, with assets primarily derived from the electric vehicle firm Tesla and the space exploration company SpaceX.
Former Twitter CEO and creator Jack Dorsey, as well as current CEO Prag Agarwal, have yet to publicly respond to his latest offer.
