Elon Musk has bought a 9.2 per cent stake in Twitter worth nearly $2.9bn (£2.2bn). The multibillionaire chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX purchased approximately 73.5 million shares, according to a regulatory filing on Monday.
His stake is considered a passive investment, which means he is a long-term investor looking to minimise his buying and selling of the shares. Mr Musk – now Twitter's single biggest shareholder – has recently been raising questions about the ability to communicate freely on the social media platform, posting last month about free speech.
"Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?" he tweeted to his 80 million followers. In a separate tweet, Mr Musk said he was "giving serious thought" to creating a new social media platform.
News of Mr Musk's investment sent Twitter's shares soaring 25 per cent up in pre-market trading. Last month the businessman asked a federal judge to nullify a subpoena from securities regulators and throw out a 2018 court agreement in which he had to have someone pre-approve his tweets.
Dan Ives of investment firm Wedbush Securities said: "We would expect this passive stake as just the start of broader conversations with the Twitter board/management that could ultimately lead to an active stake and a potential more aggressive ownership role of Twitter."
