At the auction on Monday, Twitter's securities soared by 28% in the pre-auction on the news that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk acquired a passive stake of 9.2% of its shares. The American entrepreneur reported this to the SEC – the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States.
In a statement published on the SEC's official website, it is said that Musk owns 73,486,938 shares of the microblogging service. Based on the closing price of Twitter last Friday, the cost of the package is $2.89 billion.
The American billionaire is an active user of the popular social network and has more than 80 million subscribers on it. Despite this, many of Musk's tweets have caused criticism and discontent among followers over the years. One day, even a leading American regulator became interested in the billionaire's tweets.
So, in August 2018, Musk announced on the social network Twitter that he had "secured financing" in order to make Tesla private at a price of $420 per security. The publication had the effect of an exploding bomb and provoked a roller coaster for Tesla shareholders for a whole year. Despite the fact that the electric car company has set high-profile performance records in 12 months, its management has faced lawsuits and government investigations.
As a result, he paid $40 million to settle the charges of the US Securities and Exchange Commission that Musk deceived investors with messages on the social network Twitter. In addition, in September 2018, the Silicon Valley billionaire was suspended from the position of head of the company's board of directors for three years. This decision was made as part of a settlement agreement between the SEC and Tesla, which was confirmed by an American court.
Recently, Elon Musk has often criticized the popular American social network for its policies and claimed that Twitter undermines democracy and restricts the freedom of speech of its users.
Last week, the CEO of Tesla announced that he was thinking about creating his own social network with the support of a virtual Dogecoin coin. In the future, Musk's ideal online platform may consist of an open source algorithm, as well as prioritize freedom of speech and exclude propaganda.
The American company Twitter Inc. was founded in March 2006 by software architect Jack Dorsey. The company's main product is a social network for public messaging. Twitter is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States of America.
