Elon Musk’s bid for Twitter sent social media into a frenzy last month, with thousands of users threatening to walk away from the platform if he bought the platform.
Their worst fears were realised when the Tesla boss offered to buy the entire app for a whopping $46.5billion.
However, since then, it hasn’t been plain sailing after the shareholders agreed to the takeover, with Elon himself now threatening to scrap the deal.
It’s been a turbulent path, with Musk wanting to champion freedom of speech on the service.
So what's happened to the Twitter deal and will it ever go through?
Timeline of Elon Musk's Twitter takeover
January 2022
In January 2022 the SpaceX CEO started to buy shares in Twitter.
He did so in near-daily instalments, quickly building to a 5% stake over the course of eight weeks.
March 2022
On March 27, Elon considered going in a completely different direction and setting up his own alternative to Twitter.
Posting to his 80 million followers on the app, he said he was giving the idea some “serious thought”.
It was around this time when he reached out to his friend and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey to discuss the idea in private, along with other board members.
In just a few days, he told the board of his growing share in the company, requesting to join the board as a result.
April 2022
This was when things really got into motion, as a regulatory filing revealed that the Boring Company boss had accrued the largest shareholding of Twitter at 9%.
This equates to 73.5 million shares, or around $3billion worth.
This is when he and the board reached a deal, that he could join them at the table only on the condition that he didn't buy more than 14.9 per cent of shares.
At the time, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted: “It became clear to us that he could bring great value to our Board.”
However, this took a turn on April 11 when Parag confirmed that Elon would not be joining the board after all.
This is when the rumours of his buyout began to first circulate the web and on April 14, Twitter revealed that Elon offered to buy the company for a staggering $44billion.
Over the course of the following days, the board became increasingly pressured to negotiate with Elon, especially after he secured $46.5 billion to buy Twitter outright.
Despite efforts to avoid a hostile takeover of the company, on April 25 a deal was reached, and Elon confirmed his plans to take Twitter private.
It was reported that Elon sold $8.5 billion worth of Tesla shares to finance the eye-watering Twitter deal.
May 2022
At this point, Elon was simply solidifying his deal, with an additional $7billion from a select group of investors.
Later, he revealed that he would reverse Twitter’s ban on President Donald Trump, showcasing to users what the app under Elon would look like.
However, this is when things start to slow down, as he announced via a Tweet that the buyout was “temporarily on hold”, on May 13.
He said he needed to understand the number of spam and fake accounts operating on the platform.
June 2022
Elon threatened to cancel the entire deal due to requiring more data on spam bots.
On June 6, Elon said that Twitter is in “clear material breach” of the deal, adding that be could “terminate” it as a result.
In a letter sent to Twitter that day, his lawyers wrote: “Mr. Musk believes the company is actively resisting and thwarting his information rights (and the company’s corresponding obligations) under the merger agreement.”
