Tesla chief executive officer, Elon Musk, has said he decided to continue with the purchase of Twitter to fast-track the creation of another social app named ‘X’. In what came as his official confirmation of an earlier report that the billionaire had made an offer to Twitter to continue with the $44 billion deal after months of back and forth, Musk in a Twitter post, said the new app would cover ‘everything’.
Responding to one of his followers who suggested that it would have been easier for Musk to start the new app afresh without buying Twitter, the Tesla CEO said: “Twitter probably accelerates X by 3 to 5 years, but I could be wrong.
Musk had been trying for months to back out of his contract to acquire Twitter, signed in April. Shortly afterward, he began showing signs of buyer’s remorse, alleging that Twitter had misled him about the size of its user base and the prevalence of automated accounts known as bots.
With a court trial on the matter slated for later this October, analysts are saying that Elon Musk has no chance of winning the case against Twitter as he has been unable to bring up enough evidence to back up his bot claim.
Since Musk’s proposal to follow through on the deal went public, Twitter shares increased by 16%, reaching about $49 per share. This has prompted Twitter to halt trading on its shares. When Musk initially made his acquisition offer in April, the stock traded at nearly $51 before dropping to about $36 in July, when he said he would terminate the deal.