Elon Musk has purchased a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter according to a regulatory filing posted Monday.
The stake, which was worth about $2.89 billion based on Friday’s stock price, makes Musk the company’s largest individual shareholder, Bloomberg reported. Other major Twitter shareholders are mostly large funds from investment companies such as Vanguard and BlackRock.
The move comes about a week after Musk publicly criticized Twitter for not being democratic enough. In a Twitter poll, he asked his followers whether they believe that Twitter “rigorously adheres” to the principle of free speech as “essential to a functional democracy.” He hinted that he has some sort of plan regarding Twitter, saying that the consequences of the poll “will be important.”
The majority of the folks who voted — roughly 70 percent — voted “no,” and Musk followed up by saying he’s giving “serious thought” to the idea of building a new social media platform.
It appears, however, that Musk is more interested in changing Twitter from the inside. While owning 9.2 percent of Twitter doesn’t give him the power to radically alter the company as he pleases, it will probably make him able to at least influence Twitter’s decisions in the future. It also opens the door for a buyout in the future. “We would expect this passive stake as just the start of broader conversations with the Twitter board/management that could ultimately lead to an active stake; more aggressive ownership role of Twitter,” WedBush analyst Dan Ives tweeted on Monday.
Musk’s primary mode of communication with the public is Twitter, and he typically tweets several times every day. The Tesla CEO’s tweets got him into trouble on more than one occasion, most notably when he tweeted about “taking Tesla private” with little to back it up.
This story is developing…
