Musk’s $44b Twitter bid gets Sequoia, Binance backing

Elon Musk has secured nearly US$7.1 billion from investors for his bid to acquire Twitter for US$44 billion, TechCrunch reported.

A regulatory filing reveals cryptocurrency exchange Binance has committed US$500 million to the buyout, while Sequoia Capital will shell out US$800 million for the deal.

The trust set up by Lawrence J. Ellison, an American business tycoon and founder of Oracle, has written the largest check of US$1 billion to support Musk’s takeover of the microblogging platform.

Other notable names backing Musk’s bid are Andreessen Horowitz, VyCapital, Aliya Capital Partners, and Qatar Holdings.

Musk also disclosed in the filing that he is in talks with existing shareholders, including Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, to facilitate the deal.

See also: Is Asia ready for Sequoia’s perpetual fund model?

On April 25, Musk struck a deal to acquire Twitter even though the social networking platform had set up a “poison pill” defense to prevent the Tesla chief from raising his stake in Twitter to more than 15%.

Musk sold Tesla shares worth nearly US$4 billion in the two days after he agreed to buy the social media platform.