The back and forth drama between Elon Musk and Twitter has ended after six months as the world’s richest man officially buys the social media platform for $44 billion.
Elon Musk who runs Tesla and Space X shared a message on the social media platform captioned, “Dear Twitter Advertisers,” to announce his acquirement.
In the tweet he pointed out the purpose of his acquirement.
“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” Musk stated.
He added: “That’s why I bought Twitter. I didn’t do it because it would be easy. I didn’t do it to make more money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love.”
Musk entered Twitter Headquarters holding a sink on 26 October through the lobby.
He later tweeted a video saying, “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!”
That caption which has now raised speculations about the fate of his planned takeover at the time. Hours earlier, he had updated his Twitter profile bio to “Chief Twit”, hinting at being the company’s top boss.
It has been six months of ongoing drama since Musk made his unsolicited $54.20 per share bid public.
Initially, Twitter resisted the deal by adopting a so-called “poison bill.”
The company later sued the billionaire after he declared plans to abandon it since he was concerned about spam accounts on the platform.
If the deal had not been secured by 28 October, Musk would have to face a trial over the contract.
Luckily, he made it official however. Co-investors who committed to help fund the Twitter deal were notified of his plans.
Reuters news agency reported that the equity investors, including Sequoia Capital, Binance, Qatar Investment Authority as well as others, had received the requisite paperwork for the financing commitment from Musk’s lawyers.
Musk had told prospective investors about his Twitter purchase that he plans to cut nearly seventy-five percent of Twitter’s employee base of 7,500 workers. Such a move would have left the company with a skeleton crew, according to a report by The Washington Post.
The Tesla chief previously expressed his thoughts on making Twitter more useful, indicating he wants it to be more like WeChat, a messaging service that’s hugely popular in China.
He also mentioned TikTok, the Chinese-owned video-sharing service that has taken off across the US.
He has drawn parallels to so-called super apps that are common in parts of Asia. These let people use a single smartphone application for a broad range of services, from messaging and other communications to ordering food and summoning a car.
At Tesla Inc.’s annual shareholder meeting in August, Musk stressed that he uses Twitter a lot and has ideas on ways to make the platform “radically better.” He compared his ambitions for Twitter with the vision he had for X, a financial services company he co-founded in 1999.
“I do sort of have a grander vision for what I thought X.com or X corporation could have been back in the day,” Musk said.
“It’s a pretty grand vision, and obviously that could be started from scratch, but I think Twitter would help accelerate that by three to five years.” He went on to say: “it’s something that will be very useful for the world.”
According to a study from accounting firm Tipalti Approve, Elon Musk would become the world’s first trillionaire by 2024.
