A group of investors, including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Binance and Fidelity 89 has invested over $7 billion to back Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter.
The $44 billion deal that will see Twitter become a privately owned entity managed by Elon Musk’s business entity was announced on April 25th, and Musk shared a tweet following the announcement, that spoke on free speech and how this forms the cornerstone of a “functioning democracy”.
While many initially believed the news to be an April fools joke, given the timing of the initial announcement by Elon Musk that he would be buying Twitter, the deal has now been confirmed.
The Tesla Chief’s acquisition of Twitter will be finalised towards the end of 2022, following the approval of Twitter’s stockholders and regulatory bodies overseeing the matter.
A Thursday filing has revealed that Elon Musk has received $7.1 billion in outside funding, following Musk’s margin loan being reduced to $6.25bn from $12.5bn. Musk’s total equity commitment was brought to $27.25 billion.
Saudi Arabian investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who was initially opposed to the Twitter buyout, has confirmed that he will also continue to invest his $1.89bn stake into the deal rather than cashing out.
Ben Horowitz, co-founder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz commented on the decision to invest, noting:
“Elon is the one person we know and perhaps the only person in the world who has the courage, brilliance, and skills to fix all of these and build the public square that we all hoped for and deserve.”
Horowitz further added:
“We invested, because we believe in Ev and Jack’s vision to connect the world and we believe in Elon’s brilliance to finally make it what it was meant to be. While Twitter has great promise as a public square, it suffers from a myriad of difficult issues ranging from bots to abuse to censorship. Being a public company solely reliant on an advertising business model exacerbates all of these.”
Changpeng Zhao, founder and chief executive of Binance also commented on the decision to invest, noting that the crypto exchange hopes to be able to “play a role in bringing social media and web3 together and broadening the use and adoption of crypto and blockchain technology.”
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Source: https://cryptodaily.co.uk/2022/05/elon-musk-secures-7-billion-funding-sequoia-binance-other-investors-back-twitter-bid