Elon Musk now owns four times the Twitter shares that founder Jack Dorsey owns. The richest man in America bought out a more than 9% stake in the company.
Musk has recently called Twitter the “De facto town square” and noted that censoring speech on the platform is an undermining of democracy. Leading up to the announcement of his big purchase musk ran polls on his own Twitter account, asking users if they felt Twitter allows free speech.
70% of the 2 million who answered voted no. Elon noted “the consequences of this poll will be important, please answer carefully,” indicating that he had an obvious plan.
The same day that Musk made the SEC filing, he had challenged Vladimir Putin to “single combat” using his Twitter account.
The Daily Mail reported, ‘We would expect this passive stake as just the start of broader conversations with the Twitter board/management that could ultimately lead to an active stake and a potential more aggressive ownership role of Twitter,’ Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities wrote in a client note early Monday.
“This eventually could lead to some sort of buyout.” Ives said, “This makes sense given what Musk has at least been talking about, at least from a social media perspective.”
His stake, on Friday, was worth roughly $2.9 billion at the market close, but news of his trade caused Twitter stock prices to soar by 26%. This means that his shares are now worth roughly $3.6 billion.
Aside from Twitter, when the news broke, the prices of Meta and Snapchat stocks also rose.