Elon Musk Becomes Top Shareholder of Twitter After Buying 9% of Company

Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchased a 9.2% passive stake in Twitter that makes him the largest outside shareholder in the social media stock.

Musk owns 73,486,938 shares of Twitter, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission 13G filing released Monday. The stake is worth $2.89 billion, based Twitter’s closing price Friday.

“Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy,” Musk tweeted the following day, before publicly asking whether a “new platform” is needed. Given that Musk purchased his stake in Twitter on March 14th, it appears as though these comments came after his decision to buy a stake.

Musk had been publicly calling into question Twitter’s approach to free speech via a poll conducted on his Twitter account on March 25th. “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” the CEO asked, before noting in a follow-up tweet that “the consequences of this poll will be important.”

Elon’s influence on Twitter appears to already be making a huge impact as the PC rats start to jump ship.

As Revolver News put it, “In short, transforming Twitter back into a real free speech platform would represent nothing less than a declaration of war against the Globalist American Empire.“