Elon Musk has taken a 9.2% stake in Twitter, consistent with a US securities filing. The announcement sent Twitter shares soaring by over 27% in the big apple trading on Monday. Tesla's chief executive owned 73,486,938 shares within the social media platform as of 14 March, in step with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The stake is worth $2.89bn (£2.2bn), supported by Twitter's price on Friday.
It makes him the most important shareholder within the company, with quite fourfold the two.25% holding of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.
Mr. Musk could be a regular Twitter user with over 80 million followers, although recently he said he's giving "serious thought" to assembling a replacement social media platform. Late last month, Mr. Musk asked his followers whether or not they thought the social media platform encouraged free speech. "Free speech is important to a functioning democracy. does one believe Twitter rigorously adheres to the present principle?" He then asked: "Is a brand new platform needed?" Given that Twitter is the de facto public town square, failing to stick to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy.
What should be done? https://t.co/aPS9ycji37
— Elon Musk
(@elonmusk) March 26, 2022
View original tweet on Twitter
He regularly uses
Twitter to share updates from the companies he owns - including SpaceX and Neural
ink. He is also known for sharing memes, adding to his popularity among fans.
But some posts have
drawn controversy.
Last year he tweeted
in response to a claim, made by the head of the UN World Food Programme (WFP),
that just 2% of Mr. Musk's wealth could help to solve world hunger.
In October, Mr. Musk
said he would sell $6bn in Tesla stock and donate it to the WFP, provided it
could describe "exactly how $6bn will solve world hunger".
Mr. Musk saw the valuation of his Tesla car company surpass a
market value of $1 trillion last autumn, making it the fifth such firm to reach
the milestone, after Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google-owner Alphabet.
Soon after he took to Twitter to ask users if he should sell a
10% stake in the electric carmaker.
More than 3.5 million Twitter users voted, with nearly 58%
voting in favor of the share sale leading to Musk selling around $5bn (£3.7bn) of shares in
the firm in November.
