Over $7.1 billion has been invested in Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s $44 billion offer to purchase Twitter by a group of almost two dozen investors, including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, crypto exchange Binance, and asset management company Fidelity. According to a Thursday filing, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who is also a Tesla investor, gave the largest check, valued at $1 billion. According to the updated 13D filing, Sequoia funded $800 million, VyCapital $700 million, Binance $500 million, and Andreessen Horowitz $400 million. Notably, no investor has invested more than $1 billion, and big private equity companies have remained silent.
In a tweet, Ben Horowitz, co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, stated, “Elon is the one person we know, and possibly the only person in the world, who has the bravery, intelligence, and talents to repair all of these and construct the public square that we all hoped for and deserve.” “We put money in because we believe in Ev and Jack’s vision to link the globe, and we believe in Elon’s intellect to make it what it was meant to be.” While Twitter has immense potential as a public forum, it is plagued by a slew of problems ranging from bots to abuse to censorship. All of them are exacerbated by being a public firm completely relying on an advertising revenue model,” he continued.
Qatar, which, as you may recall, has a horrible track record with free expression, is one of the backers of Musk’s new funding. According to the announcement, Saudi Arabia’s prince Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud, who had previously opposed the Twitter purchase, has agreed to provide approximately 35 million shares in the firm to keep a stake following Musk’s takeover.
Musk said he’s talking to a few more existing owners, including Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, to see if they want to roll their shares over. Musk claimed the $12.5 billion margin loan he obtained from Morgan Stanley and other banks has been reduced to $6.25 billion as a result of the new investment. His overall equity investment has also climbed to $27.25 billion.
Musk will be relieved by the additional investment as he tries to raise tens of billions of dollars to purchase Twitter. He sold roughly 9.6 million Tesla shares valued about $8.5 billion late last month. Tesla’s stock plummeted as a result of the move, requiring the billionaire to reassure shareholders that he had no plans to sell any additional shares. Binance’s founder and CEO, Changpeng Zhao, stated that the crypto exchange intends to “play a role in bringing social media and web3 together, as well as extending the use and adoption of crypto and blockchain technology.”
