Shares of Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) surged 25% during the premarket trading session of Monday after Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk has reportedly acquired a 9.2% stake in Twitter Inc. Late in March, the Silicon Valley billionaire stated that he was considering creating a new social networking site.
Musk was answering a Twitter user who asked whether he would consider creating a social media platform based on an open-source algorithm that prioritized free expression and had less propaganda. Musk, who himself has an account on Twitter, has recently been critical of the social media platform and its policies. He claims that the firm is hurting democracy by not adhering to the values of free speech.
According to documents filed with the SEC on March 14, Musk now has a 9.2 percent ownership of Twitter. The position, according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, might be a forerunner to a full-fledged takeover play for the San Francisco-based company, which has a market value of roughly $32 billion.
Furthermore, Twitter announced earlier this year that its average monetizable daily active users, or the number of daily users who can watch advertising, for the final three months of 2021 was 217 million, although that figure only reflected a 1 million increase in U.S.-based users.