Elon Musk the world’s richest man, has bought a 9.2% stake in Twitter, bluebloodz.com has learned.
According to a US Securities and Exchange Commission, filing, the purchase of the Shares on microblogging platform Twitter makes him the company’s largest shareholder.
The Tesla founder and tech guru bought 73,486,938 Twitter shares on 14 March, to the which is worth $2.89bn (£2.20bn), and is more than four times the 2.25% holding of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.
Twitter shares soared about 25% in pre-market trading on Monday, April 4 since the news went viral. Elon Musk, who is also a regular Twitter user with more than 80 million followers, recently said he is giving “serious thought” to building a new social media platform, after asking his followers whether they thought the social media platform encouraged free speech.
“Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” He then asked: “Is a new platform needed?”