Elon Musk at the opening of Teslaâs German factory. | Photo by Christian Marquardt – Pool/Getty Images
Tesla CEO Elon Musk now owns 9.2 percent of Twitter according to a 13G filing released today, Bloomberg News reports. According to the filing, Musk purchased the stake on March 14th. Musk has long been one of Twitterâs highest profile users with over 80 million followers on the platform. Twitterâs share price was up over 25 percent in pre-market trading on the news.
CNBC notes that Muskâs Twitter stocks were worth $2.89 billion based on Fridayâs closing price. Muskâs shares are classified as a passive stake, but Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told CNBC that the purchase âcould lead to some sort of buyout.â
Musk had been publicly calling into question Twitterâs approach to free speech via a poll conducted on his Twitter account on March 25th. âFree speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?â the CEO asked, before noting in a follow-up tweet that âthe consequences of this poll will be important.â
The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully.
â Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 25, 2022
âGiven that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy,â Musk tweeted the following day, before publicly asking whether a ânew platformâ is needed. Given that Musk purchased his stake in Twitter on March 14th, it appears as though these comments came after his decision to buy a stake.
Earlier in the month, Musk said he was a âfree speech absolutistâ after he claimed Starlink had been told by some governments to block access to Russian news sources. âWe will not do so unless at gunpoint,â he said.
Muskâs use of Twitter has occasionally gotten the CEO into hot water. In 2018 he infamously tweeted that he had secured the funds to take Tesla private if it reached $420 a share. Eventually it emerged that he had not secured funding for the sale, and Musk was forced by the Securities and Exchange Commission to have Teslaâs lawyers pre-approve any tweets about the companyâs financial health, sales, delivery numbers, and more.