According to a regulatory filing published Monday, Elon Musk has bought a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter.
According to Bloomberg, Musk is the company’s largest individual stakeholder with a stake worth $2.89 billion based on Friday’s stock price. The majority of other big Twitter shareholders are large funds from investment firms like Vanguard and BlackRock.
The move comes only a week after Musk openly chastised Twitter for being insufficiently democratic. He questioned his followers on Twitter if they thought Twitter “rigorously adheres” to the ideal of free expression as “essential to a functional democracy” in a Twitter poll. He implied that he had some type of Twitter strategy, stating that the poll’s results “will be important.”
Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy.
Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 25, 2022
Musk, on the other hand, appears to be more interested in altering Twitter from inside. While holding 9.2 percent of Twitter does not give him complete control over the firm, it does give him the ability to influence future choices. It also offers the possibility of a future takeover. WedBush analyst Dan Ives tweeted on Monday, “We would anticipate this passive position to be just the start of larger talks with the Twitter board/management that might eventually lead to an active stake; more aggressive ownership role of Twitter.”
Musk’s major means of communication with the general public is Twitter, which he uses multiple times a day. Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s tweets have gotten him into controversy on several occasions, most notably when he tweeted about “taking Tesla private” without providing any evidence.