Elon Musk Faces 'Tepid' Interest in Unexpected New Strategy to Fund Twitter Bid: Report The billionaire is in need of funding to secure his $44 billion bid to finalize his purchase of Twitter by the end of 2022.
By Emily Rella •
Elon Musk's pending bid to buy Twitter for an estimated $44 billion isn't just expensive in its valuation, but expensive in its proposed nature.
The Tesla CEO plans to take over Twitter by purchasing all of the social media company's shares for $54.20 each in an all-cash deal; and naturally, coming up with that much cash upfront can be a difficult feat, even for a billionaire.
Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that Musk's SpaceX is planning to sell off its remaining shares in a tender offer in which Musk is rumored to be one of the sellers.
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Stock would sell at $70 starting this week and would bring SpaceX's total valuation to around $125 billion if successful.
Musk currently owns 44% of SpaceX's shares, and offloading them would give the billionaire additional capital to help fund his pending Twitter acquisition.
He's already raised roughly $7 billion from a mix of VC firms, private equity firms and individual investors as of a May 4 filing with the SEC.
Musk's largest investment to date comes from fellow billionaire and Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who committed a whopping $1 billion to the Tesla CEO's acquisition of Twitter.
Related: Report: Elon Musk Aims to Make Twitter Public Again 'In a Few Years'
The New York Post reported on Wednesday that the tender offer was receiving "very tepid demand," citing sources with "direct knowledge" of the matter.
If this strategy were to not pan out for Musk, the billionaire would have to keep searching for investors and other sources of funding in order to close the deal by the end of 2022 as expected.
The limitations on finding funding are yet another bump in the road for Musk as he tries to complete his purchase, explaining via Twitter on Tuesday that the "deal cannot move forward" until Twitter's CEO, Parag Agrawal, publicly shows proof that bots and spam accounts only account for less than 5% of Twitter's total users.
Twitter was trading at $37.42 per share on premarket Wednesday, dropping around 3% in a 24-hour period as of early the same afternoon.
