Elon Musk and the $44 billion Twitter buyout he’s trying to terminate

First, we learned that Elon Musk had purchased enough shares of Twitter to become its largest individual shareholder. The company announced Musk would take a seat on its board of directors, but within the space of a week, that plan unraveled, and Musk informed the board he would not accept the position.

Elon’s next move came in the form of an unsolicited offer to buy 100 percent of Twitter’s shares for $54.20 each, or about $44 billion.

On April 25th, it seemed like it was all over. Twitter accepted Elon Musk’s offer to purchase the company for $44 billion.

Of course, things couldn’t be that simple.

On July 8th, after prolonged posturing and many, many tweets, Musk sent a letter to Twitter saying he plans on terminating their merger agreement, claiming the company is in material breach of the deal, and accusing Twitter of “false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement.” His claim that Twitter breached the deal relies on an argument that has not accurately represented the amount of spam and bot activity on the platform and has failed to satisfy his requests for evidence proving otherwise.

Twitter chairman of the board Bret Taylor responded (on Twitter of course), saying the company “plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement.”

Musk, who already leads Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Neuralink, is one of Twitter’s most visible users, with a large audience of devoted followers. The billionaire exec spontaneously shares earthshaking company plans, uncredited memes, and bizarre accusations. That’s in addition to responses that serve as a global tech support line for people who want everything from help with their electric car to politicians seeking satellite internet so they can keep citizens connected during a war.

The Musk era at Twitter included a surprise reveal that it will test an edit button for tweets soon — news that the company insists had nothing to do with a poll that its almost board member posted about the feature just before it was confirmed.