Twitter has reached an agreement for the billionaire Elon Musk to buy the social media platform in a $44bn deal.
The announcement follows what were reported to be extensive discussions between Musk and Twitter’s board starting on Sunday that stretched into the early hours on Monday.
Musk announced an offer to buy the social media platform on 14 April for $54.20 a share, or about $44bn.
The new talks were prompted by the Tesla and SpaceX chief disclosing his financing for the move, despite the company adopting a “poison pill” strategy, driving shareholders to urge the company’s management not to let a deal slip away.
Musk, who is a regular user of the platform, made the surprise offer to buy Twitter earlier this month.
It came just days after he rejected a seat on the social media company’s board, which would have stopped him from taking over the company.
The meme-posting billionaire, who is now the wealthiest man in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, argued that Twitter needed to be taken private to grow and become a genuine platform for free speech.
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Speaking at TED2022 in Vancouver earlier this month, he denied that the move was made on business grounds, saying: “This is not a way to sort of make money. My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important.”
In a letter to the company’s chairman Bret Taylor he wrote: “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.”
He added: “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”
