He was one of Twitter’s biggest trolls, then he became its most powerful provocateur. Now, Elon Musk is set to own the company outright.
On Monday, the social media company announced that it had reached an agreement with the world’s richest man to buy the firm and take it private. True to Musk’s form, the sale price—$54.20 per share—included a subtle wink at the marijuana reference “420.”
The deal represents a 38 percent premium over Twitter’s closing stock price as of April Fool’s Day, the day before Musk unveiled his 9.2 percent stake in the business, a company press release said.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in the statement. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
This story is breaking and will be updated.
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