Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk on Tuesday proposed to buy Twitter for $44 billion (over Rs 3,36,910 crore) – the original price he had offered to the social media company before the negotiations turned into litigation in July, Reuters reported, citing security filings.
A Twitter spokesperson confirmed that the social media firm had received the proposal, adding that “the intention of the company is to close the transaction at $54.20 (Rs 4,253.24) per share”, the BBC reported. It is yet to announce its next move.
Musk had proposed to buy Twitter on April 26.
However, Musk had announced on July 9 that he was terminating the deal to buy Twitter, claiming that the microblogging platform had breached the buyout agreement on multiple counts. The Tesla CEO said that he took the decision as Twitter did not provide enough information about the number of spam and fake accounts on its platform.
The data on spam and fake accounts is one of Musk’s priorities for acquiring the social media company. After announcing the takeover of Twitter, Musk had said that he would remove “spam bots” from the platform.
Twitter sued Musk on July 12 after the he backed out of its $44-billion deal to buy the social media company.
Musk filed the counterclaims to the suit, essentially accusing Twitter of misleading its investors about the “key metrics” of the company, including the details about the fake accounts. The trial was set to begin on October 17.
In response to Musk’s claims before the Delaware court, Twitter claimed that it has only worked in the interests of its stockholders and accused the billionaire of trying to repudiate the acquisition deal.
Twitter submitted that neither did Musk ask the company for details about the fake account when offering to buy the platform nor did the merger agreement have any mentions about it.
On Wednesday, Musk said that he was buying Twitter to accelerate the creation of the X, the everything app.
Musk has talked about making Twitter more useful, by drawing comparisons to apps in Asia that allow smartphone users to operate certain applications for a broad range of services – from ordering food to summoning a car, Bloomberg reported.
At Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in August, Musk said that he used Twitter a lot and has ideas to make it “radically better.”
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