- Stake valued at about $3 billion
- Twitter shares surge 20%
Tesla Inc. top boss Elon Musk revealed a 9.2% stake in Twitter Inc., worth nearly $3 billion, making him the micro-blogging site’s largest shareholder and triggering a more than 25% rise in the company’s shares, reports CNN.
Musk becomes top shareholder
Musk’s move comes close on the heels of his tweet that he was giving a “serious thought” to building a new social media platform, while questioning Twitter’s commitment to free speech.
A prolific Twitter user, Musk has over 80 million followers since joining the site in 2009 and has used the platform to make several announcements, including teasing a go-private deal for Tesla that landed him in regulatory crosshairs.
Of late, however, the world’s richest person has been critical of the social media platform and its policies, and recently ran a Twitter poll asking users if they believed the platform adheres to the principle of free speech, to which over 70% voted “no”.
Twitter’s recent quarterly results and lower-than-expected user additions have raised questions about its growth prospects, even as it pursues big projects such as audio chat rooms and newsletters to end long-running stagnation.
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Source: CNN
