Elon Musk has taken a 9.2% stake in Twitter Inc. to become the platform’s biggest shareholder, a week after hinting he might shake up the social media industry.
Twitter shares surged by about 26% during premarket trading following Monday’s regulatory filing detailing Musk’s acquisition of the holding. The stake is worth about $2.89 billion, based on Friday’s market close.
Musk, 50, polledHis more than 80,000,000 Twitter followers asked him last month whether his company respects the principles of freedom speech. He was able to get more than 70% of them to say no. askedHe asked if another platform was required and indicated that he was considering starting his own.
A functioning democracy is dependent on free speech.
Are you sure that Twitter adheres to this principle in all its actions?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 25, 2022
Musk, who is one the most popular Twitter personalities, has frequently run into difficulties on Twitter. Tesla Inc.’s chief executive officer wants to end a deal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2018. This agreement imposed restrictions on Musk’s tweets about electric-car makers.
Parag, the new Twitter CEO Parag agrawal has another big test. He replaced Jack Dorsey who unexpectedly resigned in Nov. Agrawal pledged to make more accountable decisions, take faster decisions and improve product execution. Agrawal set ambitious growth goals, including increasing the company’s annual revenue by $7.5 billion and reaching 315,000,000 daily users by 2023.
Musk posted a cryptic meme in December after Twitter announced that Agrawal was taking over from Dorsey as Twitter’s CEO. The meme depicted Agrawal in the role of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and Dorsey being head of Soviet secret police Nikolai Yezhov. being shoved into water.
Twitter must move quickly to build new products. In order to prove that its seriousness about growing its business, Twitter has established ambitious user growth and revenue targets. Twitter has seen steady growth over the years but its stock gain is slower than other companies in the same industry.
Musk has lambasted Twitter’s recent development of profile pictures linked to non-fungible tokens, saying the social media company has the wrong priorities.
—With assistance from Nate Lanxon.
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