Twitter’s shares surged up to 27% on Monday after Tesla CEO Elon Musk took a 9.2% stake, becoming the social media giant’s biggest shareholder. The 9.2% stake Musk purchased is worth nearly $3 billion.
The purchase also marks the most significant increase in Twitter stocks since its first day of trading in 2013.
Musk and Twitter
The SpaceX CEO is a regular user of Twitter and often questioned the platform’s commitment to free speech. One of his tweets requested users to poll whether Twitter follows the free speech principles and over 70% of the poll results said ‘no’.
Musk started another poll, asking users if the app needs an Edit button—a long-awaited feature for the app. His tweet received a response from Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, asking users to vote carefully. The poll resulted in 70% voting ‘no’.
Elon Musk’s next move
The purchase of Twitter’s 73,486,938 stocks is followed by Elon Musk’s hint that he might shake up the social media industry. Musk has earlier said he was giving “serious thought” to building a new social media platform with minimum restrictions to users.
Although Musk’s intentions are unclear, it is speculated that he might take a controlling interest in Twitter sometime soon.