Elon Musk Is Buying Twitter. What’s Next and What Does It Mean?

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Elon Musk Is Buying Twitter. What’s Next and What Does It Mean?

Updated on April 26, 12:29 AM EDT

What You Need To Know

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, sealed a deal to buy Twitter Inc. for about $44 billion, in one of the biggest leveraged buyout deals in history. The agreement was unanimously approved by the company’s board after they initially rebuffed it, and it’s expected to be completed later this year.

Musk, who has more than 84 million followers on the platform, describes Twitter as the “digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” and says he wants to unlock the company’s potential. Sources say the agreement includes a provision that the billionaire is required to pay the company a fee if he were to walk away or the deal falls apart.

Going private marks a dramatic turnabout for a company that got its start in 2006 as a service for sharing short-burst updates for friends, then transformed into a global hive of debate and discourse for politicians, celebrities, journalists and organizations.

While the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will have to review the plan once Twitter files a statement, the regulator doesn’t have the power to block the merger outright.

By The Numbers

  • $5.08 billion Twitter's revenue in 2021
  • 217 million Monetizable daily active users, as of the fourth quarter of 2021
  • $54.20 Price per Twitter share, under Musk's deal to buy Twitter

Why It Matters

By taking Twitter private, Musk wades into a long-running debate over free speech and how social-media giants prevent hate speech and attacks on their services — including through suspensions or bans that have seen high-profile users like Donald Trump ejected from the platform for violating rules after a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in January 2021.

U.S. officials have long demanded better oversight of tech firms, with Senator Elizabeth Warren warning that they grant billionaires the power to decide “how millions of people will have an opportunity to communicate.”

Musk has hinted at a laundry list of changes he wants to make at Twitter, including scrapping restraints on speech, allowing users to edit tweets and combating the spread of bots. He also raised an unconventional proposal to turn the company’s San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter.

Musk’s deal also raises questions about the future of Twitter’s moneymaker: its advertising model. The billionaire said in an interview shortly after announcing his bid that he isn’t in it for the money. “I don’t care about the economics at all,” Musk said. But profit is a central concern for the workers who will keep the company’s engines running, especially its hard-to-find coders.

Still, Musk got a vote of support — in a series of tweets, no less — from Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, who said “Elon is the singular solution I trust” to fix the company’s problems.

    Nothing in the Tesla CEO’s track record suggests he will be a careful steward of an important media property.

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