Elon Musk Discloses 9% Stake in Twitter

The CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk has disclosed a 9% stake in the social networking platform Twitter, just a few days after he suggested that he would take a more active approach in the social networking industry.

The stock of Twitter rose 19% after Elon Musk’s stake was revealed. In a securities filing disclosed on Monday, Mr Musk reported having almost 73.5 million shares of the company. The stake is valued at $2.89 billion as of Friday. With this Elon Musk is the largest shareholder at Twitter, according to data from FactSet.

Elon Musk has been active on Twitter, where he shares information about his businesses, including Tesla, SpaceX, and Boring Co with more than 80 million followers. Recently he tweeted a poll saying, “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?"

Twitter and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram faced criticism for censoring speech and not playing a prominent role in moderating content on their platforms. 

Social networking platforms commonly use algorithms to drive engagement. Elon Musk polled his followers on Twitter asking them whether the “Twitter algorithm should be open source.”