Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44 billion

The world’s richest person, Elon Musk, will control Twitter after buying the platform for 44 billion dollars

The Tesla and Space-X CEO wants to make twitter a free speech platform.

The board of Twitter confirmed its accepted Elon Musk’s takeover bid, saying the offer has “tremendous potential” that he would unlock.

Musk said it needed to be transformed as a private company in order to build trust with users.

Musk made the grand offer over 2 weeks now and proposed a series of changes.

Twitter knocked back Mr Musk’s bid, but after a few weeks it has decided to advance with the offer.

The board says it had conducted a “comprehensive process” and will now ask shareholders to vote to approve the deal.

Mr Musk is the world’s richest man, according to Forbes magazine, with an estimated net worth of $273.6bn mostly due to his shareholding in electric vehicle maker Tesla, which he is the CEO of, alongside SpaceX.

“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,” Mr Musk said in a statement announcing the deal.

“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.”

“The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter’s stockholders,” Bret Taylor, chair of Twitter’s board, said in response.

Twitter will make the deal official as soon as the board meets with its investors.

Twitter’s shares were up about 6 per cent after the news.

The deal ends Twitter’s run as a public company, since its 2013 initial public offering.