First, we found out that Elon Musk had bought enough shares of Twitter to become the largest individual shareholder. The company announced that Musk would serve on its board of directors, but within a week that plan was unraveled and Musk informed the board that he would not accept the position.
Elon’s next move came in the form of an unsolicited offer to buy 100 percent of Twitter’s stock for $54.20 each, or about $44 billion.
On April 25, it seemed like it was all over. Twitter accepted Elon Musk’s offer to buy the company for $44 billion.
Of course it can’t be that simple.
On July 8, after much urging and many, many tweets, Musk sent a letter to Twitter says he plans to terminate their merger agreement, alleges the company is materially in breach of the deal, and accuses Twitter of “false and misleading statements that Mr. Musk relied on when entering into the Merger Agreement.” His claim that Twitter violated the deal is based on an argument that does not accurately reflect the amount of spam and bot activity on the platform and has failed to comply with his requests for evidence to the contrary.
Twitter chairman of the board Bret Taylor responded (on Twitter of course), said the company “intends to take legal action to enforce the merger agreement.”
Musk, who already leads Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company and Neuralink, is one of Twitter’s most visible users, with a large audience of devoted followers. The billionaire exec spontaneously shares earth-shattering business plans, uncredited memes and outlandish accusations. That’s in addition to responses that serve as a global tech-support line for people who want everything from help with their electric cars to politicians seeking satellite internet so they can keep civilians connected during war.
The Musk era on Twitter included a surprising revelation that it will soon be testing an edit button for tweets — news the company claims had nothing to do with a poll its near-board member posted about the position just before it was confirmed.