Elon Musk Buys a Stake in Twitter After Recently Threatening to Build Rival Platform and Comparing Company’s CEO to Stalin
Days after expressing his desire to build a social media platform that would rival Twitter, it has come to light that Elon Musk actually bought a stake in Twitter itself.
According to an SEC regulatory filing published Monday (reported by multiple outlets including Axios), Musk, the CEO of Tesla, bought a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter. Axios reports that Musk’s stake is equivalent to $2.89 billion in common stock.
On March 26, Musk tweeted that Twitter “fundamentally undermines democracy.”
Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy.
What should be done? https://t.co/aPS9ycji37
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 26, 2022
On March 27, he wrote that he was “giving serious thought” to creating a rival platform.
Am giving serious thought to this
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 27, 2022
And last December, Musk tweeted out a meme that depicted Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, and his predecessor Jack Dorsey, as Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov respectively. (Yezhov was the head of Stalin’s secret police.)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 1, 2021
CNN and other outlets confirm that Musk is now Twitter’s largest individual shareholder. Former CEO Dorsey, for his part, reportedly owns a 2.25 percent stake in the company.
