Avoiding Court Battle, Elon Musk Breaks Silence on Potential Purchase of Twitter Musk and Twitter were set to face off in court later this month because of Musk's attempt to back out of his bid to purchase the company.
By Emily Rella
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Elon Musk has finally, it seems, broken his silence on reports that he has decided to go through with his bid to purchase Twitter for the original price of $54.20 per share, or roughly $44 billion.
Late Tuesday night, Musk took to the social media platform to make a comment referencing something called "X."
Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2022
One of Musk's followers pointed out to the billionaire that it may "have been easier to just start X from scratch" to which Musk responded that purchasing Twitter could "probably accelerates X by 3 to 5 years" before quickly adding that he "could be wrong" in presuming as much.
Bloomberg mused that X could be similar in nature to the WeChat app in China, a super-app with over 1 billion users that Musk has publicly been fond of in the past.
"There's no WeChat equivalent outside of China. You basically live on WeChat in China. If we can recreate that with Twitter, we'll be a great success," Musk said this past June during a virtual all-hands with Twitter staff.
Early Wednesday morning, Wall Street Journal reported that Musk's team and Twitter had not reached an agreement to end the legal battle, citing "sources familiar with the litigation."
As of early Wednesday afternoon, neither party had publicly confirmed.
In August, amid Musk's attempted backing out of his bid to purchase Twitter, he responded to one of his followers who asked if he would ever consider creating a competitor website to the social media platform by saying "X.com."
The domain, which Musk currently owns, was purchased from PayPal in 2017.
"I do sort of have a grander vision for what I thought X Corporation could have been back in the day," Musk said in Tesla's annual shareholder meeting in August. "It's a pretty grand vision and of course that could be started from scratch but I think Twitter would accelerate that by three to five years."
Musk did not elaborate further on what exactly "X" would entail.
See original story below.
In what could be an ironic solution to the seemingly never-ending saga of Elon Musk vs. Twitter, a new bombshell report by Bloomberg on Tuesday alleges that Musk will now seek to complete the purchase of the social media platform at the original proposed price of $54.20 per share — for a grand total of around $44 billion.
The request to proceed with the purchase was reportedly written in a letter to Twitter on behalf of Musk's team.
Musk and Twitter were set to square off in court on October 17, and key witnesses were to be named as early as tomorrow should the trial proceed as planned.
Last week, texts from Musk and a number of colleagues and business people (including Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal) were made public which put Musk in a "weaker legal stance" ahead of the trial, according to analysts.
The text dump included messages about how Musk was not interested in management, for example, and it's been reported that it could be an ugly court battle and was not likely to rule in Musk's favor.
Related: What is Going on With Elon Musk and Twitter?
The billionaire has been trying to back out of his original bid to purchase the company for months, alleging that Twitter has been inconsistent and untruthful about the number of spam and bot accounts on the website.
Twitter shares were up nearly 13% in a 24-hour period around 12:30 p.m. EST following the news, with reports that shares had spiked upwards of 18% in the same time period when the news broke.
Just after 12:35 p.m. EST, Twitter stock had been halted.
Read here for details on how the battle between Elon Musk and Twitter that began in April ended up here.
This is a developing story.
