Tesla CEO Elon Musk is talking to investors he could potentially include in his bid to acquire social media platform Twitter — reports The New York Post.
Musk this week made a formal offer to purchase Twitter for $43 billion USD in cash after buying a 9.1% stake in the social media giant to become its largest shareholder earlier in the month. The Tesla CEO was originally invited to join Twitter’s board of directors, but he instead set his sights on acquiring the company outright.
According to sources close to the matter, Musk could announce a new plan that includes one or more partners within days. One likely possibility, the sources said, is for Musk to team up with private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners.
“This is not over,” said a source close to the situation.
Musk and Silver Lake go way back — the equity firm was planning to co-invest in Tesla to take the electric vehicle (EV) maker private in 2018. Egon Durban, co-CEO of Silver Lake, is a member of Twitter’s board and reportedly led Musk’s deal team during the (failed) 2018 effort to take Tesla private.
It remains to be seen whether Musk’s talks with potential partners will even bear any fruit and, if they do, whether Musk will simply add them to his existing bid or present Twitter with an entirely new proposal — perhaps raising the current offer.
Twitter’s board of directors on Friday announced the unanimous adoption of a limited duration shareholder rights plan, commonly referred to as a “poison pill,” just one day after Musk tendered his offer to buy the company.
The so-called poison pill will prevent Musk from buying more than 15% of Twitter, keeping any hostile takeover efforts from the Tesla CEO at bay for the time being.
However, the move may not stop other entities or people from acquiring their own stakes of up to 15% in the company and working with Musk to force a sale, make changes in Twitter’s executive leadership, or push for other changes in the company.
Twitter is yet to file its shareholder rights plan with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC filing will include more details on whether the poison pill prevents like-minded investors from teaming up to buy a greater than 15% stake in the company.
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I have my doubts if such a ego-maniacal person could do a right thing that is not self serving at the same time and whether he would be doing it for the right reasons. He wants to save humanity by populating Mars, wanted to save the kids, a soccer team trapped in the flooded caves, Ukraine by challenging Putin to one on one fight, free speech by taking over the Twitter etc. There’s a pattern there that points at the messiah complex. And he has plenty of money to indulge in those impulses.
These things you list are pretty self-less here. He spent his resources on saving a soccer team in a cave after someone suggested to him on twitter that he may be able to help and he then did what he could do to help them for very little benefit to himself compared to many other things he could have directed his resources to.
It sounds like you are listing insults here that are somewhat mutually exclusive – apparently he has a messiah complex where he believes he is here to help others but he also is apparently actually doing it for self servings reasons which is inconsistent with a messiah complex, not to mention that the messiah complex is delusion based while he actually achieves success so this is not an accurate description either.
It seems that there are many people who are concerned with how he may do at improving twitter. I would suggest a better approach then somewhat baselessly trying to insult Elon Musk would be to focus on other solutions. For example to push for the current twitter board to sort out the issues themselves so that others including Elon Musk no longer direct their resources towards it.
A person can do objectively great things not for the altruistic but ego inflating reasons. Henry Ford did tremendous thing for the modern society but he wasn’t such a great person (anti-Semitic, hiring goons to beat up pro union workers, pro-Nazi with a huge ego). I don’t intend to diminish Musk’s accomplishments nor I have any personal animosity toward Elon Musk, so I don’t need to insult him. That is more in your perception.
As I have said elsewhere, I always thought he was exceptionally intelligent and although his quirkiness and idiosyncrasy stemming from apparent neurodivergency both giving him borderline genius qualities and occasionally land him in controversy, never doubted he meant well. Lately, I’ve started to realize he’s a hypocrite. Also his saviour/messiah complex becomes increasingly apparent.
What is exactly selfless in underbaked suggestion on how to rescue those kids only to turn mean and call a guy who was actually involved physically in the rescue, not just behind a keyboard, a ped*file when he said Elon’s plan was trash? And to settle with him outside the court later for defamation?
Do you think his Mars project is selfless and he won’t reap any benefits, be it material or personal? And to openly admit that first people sent there won’t not only make it back but there is a good chance some will be killed along the way? It’s great to be the champion of the survival of human race over the back of other fellow human beings. It’ll cost you money, they will pay with their lives. But you are selfless in that equation?
Challenging Putin to fight (dead serious) in order to save Ukraine is beyond bizarre. Not only any rational person would realize that the fight would never happen, it is not guaranteed he would win, and if he does, that win would magically make Putin withdraw from Ukraine? That was not selfless, it was just self promoting stunt with a hint of delusion of grander.
He is doing great thing with Tesla and Space X but again, not doing it out of the goodness of his heart. He is not selflessly giving away the profits. He is doing it for sound business reasons and there is nothing wrong with that. But it’s not altruism.
Buying Twitter to save free speech? Free speech is much larger thing than any one social media outlet. How shortsighted and self conceited. Even if there was a such a thing as a society’s gatekeeper of the free speech and the truth, I’m not sure it would be best idea to make it privately owned.
Wow, someone who actually sees this for what it is.
As per usual, someone with tons of money may start out with good intentions, but it isn’t long until those intentions switch to making more money and or power.
Unless, of course, you’re Dolly Parton.
So, with that reasoning, if you have money and power, you shouldn’t ever try to do good, because you must simply be seeking more money and power.
I guess the only solution is for the state to seize, control and redistribute that money and power. That way there wouldn’t be reason to suspect anyone of trying to do good.
In fact, I think you’ll find that flawed reasoning is only used when one doesn’t like the person or ideas involved.
My comment about your insults is specific to the words of your comment, where they were present, and not to any perception about you outside of the comment. I think they were an accurate representation of that comment specifically but it is great to hear that your first comment may not be an accurate representation of what you think based on this second comment.
However, him using his resources to try to help in the cave, whether it worked or not, is still an attempt to help that reflects on his character. In general Musk has a history now of taking on tough problems and creating complex solutions to them which take time to iron out and in many situations have been successful. It may not work every time and may require significant tweaking but that can be required to many significant advances. Many of his initial ideas have not worked and he has persevered and we have seen sufficient examples of his success by this point. After a certain point it may be good for us to recognize his process when viewing his new ideas.
I do think that his vision for Mars is with an intent to improve things for humanity in the future and not just for his own interests. I would never say anybody ever is completely selfless as even those who you may perceive to be doing something with no benefit still obtain happiness from helping others which is a benefit. The real question is whether they are doing something that benefits other while gaining the benefit of satisfaction or are they doing things that are not helpful to others for their own personal gain that an actual ego-maniacal person would do.
I think we could have a public discussion about whether sacrifice of human life now is worth improving the lives of many more people in the future regardless of whether its Musk or others. It should be a discussion but I’m not clear the answer is a definite no. We honour those in the past that died for our benefit today. Musk himself is not an astronaut. Him wanting to become an astronaut for the mission would be more consistent with the type of characteristics you have ascribed to him than him taking advantage of other experts for this as he is doing and not really consistent with the labels being given to him.
He donates billions of dollars from his company to charity. Thats pretty selfless. I’m not sure what else you want him to do. He builds his company so that he can use his company to keep improving the world, and he donates what he can which is a massive amount. If you want him to fold his company and give it all away now then no, he will not do that, and that would actually benefit the world less because he cannot continue to do things into the future.
Although the concerns to free speech are multiple and are outside of twitter obviously, I do think that addressing them one step at a time is a good approach and I do not see a problem with starting with twitter. Again, if you have a better place to start then I suggest focusing on that and maybe tweet your ideas to him as he tends to consider tweets.
I agree that he should be more professional in his communication and if someone comes forward who can replace his success and also communicate better than at that time I would favour this hypothetical person.
I totally respect your view and I am not going to debate it. I wish I could go back to where you are now in terms of respect for him, to the time when I was looking up to him, inclined to see him from the predominantly positive angle with generous understanding for whatever faults he may have had. That being said, I respect the work he’s doing in many different ventures and it’s not my intention to belittle that. Also appreciate your time and effort to reply in detail, with reason and in a respectful way.
Same to you and nice to chat with you