Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk surprised the entire internet when he offered to buy Twitter. Now it appears he’ll have shocked the internet yet again, as the deal has officially gone through. Indeed, Twitter has agreed to sell itself to Elon Musk – in a deal worth $44 billion.
Previously, Elon Musk was offered a seat at its board. But this wasn’t good enough for Elon Musk – who sought to own the entire company. Now, within less than a month of stating his goals, Elon Musk has officially become the company’s largest shareholder.
As revealed via CNN, here’s how shareholders will be effected:
“Under the terms of the deal, shareholders will receive $54.20 in cash for each share of Twitter stock they own, matching Musk’s original offer and marking a 38% premium over the stock price the day before Musk revealed his stake in the company.”
Furthermore, Elon Musk released the following statement, emphasizing that his goal in purchasing Twitter is to promote “free speech.”
“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,” Musk stated. “Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
Meanwhile, Twitter independent board chair Bret Taylor gave the following statement:
“The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon’s proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing,” he began, saying the deal is “the best path forward for Twitter’s stockholders.”
With the addition of promoting free speech, Elon Musk hopes 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.” And, to truly embrace the concept of free speech, Elon Musk said he hopes “even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”
Aside from that, it’s unclear where current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal will be after Musk acquires Twitter. Elon Musk has previously hinted that he’s not very fond of Agrawal or his style of management. As such, it’ll be interesting to see where the social media platform ends up moving into the future.