Elon Musk becomes one of Twitter’s biggest shareholders

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has become one of the largest shareholders in microblogging platform Twitter after a filing revealed that the tech entrepreneur had bought a 9.2% stake in the social media firm.

Twitter shares jumped over 25% in premarket trading after news of Musk’s investment broke.

Illustration by Matahari Indonesia

At the end of last month, Musk told his roughly 80 million Twitter followers that he’s giving “serious thought” to building a social media platform to rival Twitter, which he criticized for “failing to adhere to free speech principles.”

However, Musk has not commented on his reasons for buying shares in Twitter.

Musk’s 9.2% stake is equivalent to 73.5 million shares of Twitter’s common stock and is worth US$2.89 billion based on the company’s closing price Friday.

Currently, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey holds a 2.25% stake.

See also: Twitter war erupts in India over an $800m startup

Musk’s use of Twitter has often proved contentious in the past and has affected the stock market. For instance, cryptocurrency and blockchain-related firms surged when Musk tweeted, “When there’s confirmation of reasonable (~50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend, Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions.”

Meanwhile, Dorsey and Musk have also mutually dismissed Web3 and criticized the involvement of VC firms such as Andreessen Horowitz in the decentralized blockchain ecosystem.