Elon Musk buys 9% stake in Twitter, becomes largest shareholder Tesla Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk talks to press at the construction site of Tesla's new Gigafactory near Berlin in Germany, Sept. 3, 2020. (Maja Hitij/Getty Images/TNS)
Just weeks after publicly questioning whether Twitter holds up free speech, Elon Musk has dropped nearly $3 billion to become its largest stakeholder.
The Tesla CEO has purchased a 9.2% stake in the social media company, more than quadruple the position of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission 13G filing released Monday.
Based on Twitter’s closing price Friday, Musk’s newly acquired 73,486,938 shares are worth $2.89 billion.
The 50-year-old entrepreneur hasn’t publicly commented on his purchase, but it comes as he has seemingly grown more upset with how Twitter is doing business.
“Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” he tweeted alongside a poll on March 25. “The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully.”
Of more than 2 million votes, 70.4% of respondents said “no.”
Days later, he said he was “giving serious thought” to building his own social media platform when asked by a follower.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is currently investigating Musk for his November tweet asking fans whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stake, causing shares in the company to plummet.
In 2018, Musk and Tesla were each fined $20 million by the SEC for his tweets about securing funding to take Tesla private at $420 a share, which also caused a market collapse. Musk resigned as the Tesla chairman as part of the settlement over the fraud charges but remained CEO.
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