It’s been in the works for a bit of time now, and there were some ups and downs along the way, but the seemingly inevitable end has been reached. Twitter has agreed to the acquisition terms laid out before it by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
Twitter made the announcement today via a press release. According to that release, Twitter will be acquired by Musk for $54.20 per share. If that number sounds familiar to the folks who have been following this story, that’s because it’s the same price drawn up by Musk in his initial offer for the social network. That equals out to about $44 billion when it’s all said and done.
According to Musk’s statement regarding the acquisition, “free speech” and making “Twitter better” are some of the primary reasons he went through with it:
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,’ said Mr. Musk. ‘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. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.
Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal had this to say on the matter:
Twitter has a purpose and relevance that impacts the entire world. Deeply proud of our teams and inspired by the work that has never been more important.
As mentioned above, this has been moving in this direction for a little while now. Most recently, Musk laid out this specific plan on April 21 to the SEC, where he confirmed he’d secured $25.5 billion in loans and would utilize $21 billion in personal equity to secure the acquisition of Twitter.
Things didn’t go so smoothly for Musk, though. Following the Tesla CEO’s initial declaration of a planned acquisition, the social media’s board instituted what constituted a “poison pill” that appeared to rebuke Musk’s efforts. However, that did not last long, and now Musk gets to have his Twitter and eat it, too.
Before all that happened, though, Musk earned the title of largest individual shareholder of Twitter thanks to buying up a 9.2 percent stake in the company.
So, Musk is acquiring Twitter. There’s no telling what’s first on his plans to make Twitter “better,” but it should be interesting to see what happens next.