Elon Musk Eyes Twitter CEO Role, Gains Key Investors
Over the last 24 hours, 19 different parties have put forward $7.1 billion in commitments to help finance Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of one of the world’s most popular social media platforms, Twitter.
As a result, it is expected that Musk will become Twitter’s temporary CEO once the takeover of the social media firm is official according to an individual familiar with the matter.
Musk, the world’s richest man, is also the CEO at Tesla and heads two other ventures, The Boring Company and SpaceX.
Twitter shares were up about 1.8% at $US50.00, closer to the deal price of $US54.20, as investors bet that the new funding made the completion of the deal more likely.
Earlier on Thursday, Musk listed a group of high-profile investors who are ready to provide funding of $US7.1 billion for his Twitter bid, including Oracle’s co-founder Larry Ellison and Sequoia Capital.
Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, an existing investor, has also opted to retain 34.9 million shares, subject to certain conditions.
Venture capital firm Sequoia committed $800 million, Fidelity pledged $316 million and a16z allotted $400 million.
Additionally, this included the world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, who has committed $500 million of their own funding, according to the amended 13-D, filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“We’re excited to be able to help Elon realise a new vision for Twitter,” Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao stated. “We hope to be able to play a role in bringing social media and Web 3.0 together and broadening the use and adoption of crypto and blockchain technology.”
Elon Musk is a known supporter of cryptocurrencies, like Dogecoin (DOGE) and Bitcoin (BTC), and could soon be a heavy supporter of Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Binance Coin (BNB) as the platform seeks to make the algorithm open source and move towards potentially integration cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology onto the social media platform.
The highly publicised deal has led to speculation about how his takeover of Twitter may change the makeup of ‘crypto twitter’ (CT).