Elon Musk Pulls Out of $44B Deal to Buy Twitter – By Queenie Wong & David Lumb (CNET) / July 8, 2022
What’s happening
Elon Musk sent a letter to Twitter saying he’s ending an agreement to buy the influential social media company for $44 billion.
Why it matters
Twitter says it still plans to close the deal, so Musk’s move is setting up a legal battle between the company and the billionaire. The company’s ownership also impacts the future of Twitter, which has struggled to attract more users and ad dollars.
What’s next
Twitter says it plans to pursue legal action to enforce the agreement.
Billionaire Elon Musk said Friday that he’s pulling out of a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, adding another twist to an ongoing saga in which the mercurial entrepreneur presented himself as the savior of free speech on the influential social network.
Musk, who also runs Tesla and SpaceX, said in a letter sent by his lawyer that Twitter breached multiple parts of the merger agreement by failing to provide more information about how it estimates the number of spam accounts on its platform. Twitter has reported that in the first quarter, fewer than 5% of Twitter’s 229 million daily users were fake or spam-focused, but Musk says that number might not be accurate.
“This information is fundamental to Twitter’s business and financial performance,” reads the letter to Twitter from Musk lawyer Mike Ringler. The letter also said that Twitter “appears to have made false and misleading representations.”
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