Queen Nwabueze
World’s richest man and latest Twitter owner, Elon Musk has sent his very first tweet after reaching an agreement to buy Twitter for around $44bn.
The company’s new owner simply tweeted, “Yes!!!” surrounded by red hearts, shooting stars and rocket ship emojis, above his statement on the deal.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelIn a statement announcing the deal, Musk had affirmed:
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”
He wrote: “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.
Earlierths company had announced that it had accepted the Tesla CEO’s offer of $54.20 cash per share for the San Francisco-based platform, which will now be taken private.
Prime Business Africa recalled that just recently, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO topped Forbes’ annual billionaires list for the first time this month as he became Twitter’s largest shareholder, ousting former Amazon president Jeff Bezos, who spent the last four years as the richest person in the world.
Musk has an estimated net worth of $273.6bn per Forbes’ real-time tracker as at 14 April having been on the list for a decade, with his massive wealth over the last several years attributed to his soaring and volatile Tesla stock. Two years ago, Musk ranked 31st in the world on Forbes list, with stock shares in his electric vehicle company at $72.24. One year later, his fortune expanded by billions, trailing Bezos by only $26bn.
Recall also that in 2012, when the new Twitter chairman debuted on the list, his net worth was estimated to be $2bn. Today, Musk is estimated to be $68bn richer than… just one year ago.
The number of world billionaires dropped by roughly 100 people in 2022, maintaining a global net worth of $12.7 trillion, down from last year’s $13.1 trillion.
But the number of billionaires in the US grew to 725 people, worth a combined $4.7 trillion, or roughly one-third of the all billionaire wealth in the world.
