Elon Musk is now the largest stakeholder in Twitter. Musk purchased 9.2 percent of Twitter stock this week.
News of his massive purchase sent Twitter shares skyrocketing at 22 percent in early trading. It has not been disclosed what Musk paid in actuality for the shares, however, his stake is worth a massive $2.9 billion at the close of trading last week, and it jumped to $3.5 billion on Monday.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO now has more shares than the platform’s co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey.
Musk recently was beefing with Twitter over the concept of free speech. The billionaire accused the platform of failing to uphold free speech principles. With over 80 million followers, Musk cares a lot about Twitter and his own views being spread on the platform.
After the Jan. 6 insurrection on the capital last year, Musk wrote that people won’t like “West Coast high tech” acting as a “de facto arbiter.”
Musk has also trolled the new Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. He has tweeted a meme out before, in example, that equated Agrawal to former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and depicted now-former CEO Dorsey as a former Stalin confident that was assassinated.
Musk has also been in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the use of the platform and whether he complies with SEC regulations.
So what does his purchase of Twitter mean? There is no indication yet that Musk will be an active shareholder and no word on whether this is the price of admission for him to join the board.
But Musk has asked Twitter users if they’d want an “edit button,” making people assume that he will attempt an active role. He released a poll that received over 2 million votes as well, asking if users believe Twitter unfairly censors speech.
Experts say Musk’s purchase could really be that one of the richest people in the world has officially bought influence to change a social media platform for his own desires.
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