Elon Musk Is Nearing a Deal to Buy Twitter: Live Updates

Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco. Twitter’s board was negotiating with Elon Musk into early Monday morning, but the deal could still fall apart.Credit…Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Twitter is nearing a deal to sell itself to Elon Musk, two people with knowledge of the situation said, a move that would unite the world’s richest man with the influential social networking service. An agreement could be announced as soon as Monday, the people told The Times’s Lauren Hirsch, Mike Isaac and Katie Conger.

Twitter’s board was negotiating with Mr. Musk into Monday over his unsolicited bid to buy the company, after he began lining up $46.5 billion in financing for the offer last week, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss confidential information. The two sides were talking about details including a timeline to close any potential deal and any fees that would be paid if an agreement were signed and then fell apart, they said.

The discussions followed a Twitter board meeting on Sunday morning to discuss Mr. Musk’s offer, the people said. Obtaining commitments for the financing was a turning point for how the board viewed Mr. Musk’s bid of $54.20 a share, enabling the company’s 11 board members to seriously consider his offer, the people said.

Twitter’s stock rose 4 percent on Monday, to about $51.23 a share.

An agreement is not yet final and may still fall apart, but what had initially seemed to be a highly improbable deal appeared to be nearing an endgame. The situation involving Twitter and Mr. Musk remains fluid and fast-moving, the people with knowledge of the situation said.

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Elon Musk can at times be inscrutable, and his politics are elusive, which has made it somewhat difficult to determine exactly what the billionaire would do if he successfully acquired Twitter. But over the past weeks and months, Mr. Musk has given more hints about what he would change about Twitter — in interviews, regulatory filings and, of course, on his personal Twitter account.

Here are the main areas Mr. Musk could seek to address:

Free speech and content moderators. Mr. Musk has frequently expressed concern that Twitter’s content moderators go too far and intervene too much on the platform, which he sees as the internet’s “de facto town square.”

In the regulatory filing in which he announced his bid to buy Twitter, he wrote: “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.”

He added that he didn’t trust the company’s current leadership to make the changes he saw as necessary and prioritize his ideas about free speech on the platform. “Since making my investment, I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form,” he wrote. “Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”

The Trump question. Mr. Musk has not commented publicly on how he would handle the former President Donald Trump’s banned Twitter account. But his free speech comments have stoked speculation that Twitter under his ownership might reinstate Mr. Trump, who was barred from the platform last year. After the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Twitter said Mr. Trump had violated its policies by inciting violence among his supporters. Facebook also banned Mr. Trump for the same reason.

The former president, who was known for tweets that criticized opponents and sometimes announced policy changes, is also trying to get his own social media site off the ground. His start-up, Truth Social, has struggled to attract users, and the problem could get worse now that Mr. Musk has suggested changing content moderation rules on Twitter. Mr. Trump said in a recent interview that he probably wouldn’t rejoin Twitter if he could.

The algorithm. At a TED conference this month, he elaborated on his plans to make the company’s algorithm an open-source model, which would allow users to see the code showing how certain posts came up in their timelines.

He said the open-source method would be better than “having tweets sort of be mysteriously promoted and demoted with no insight into what’s going on.”

Mr. Musk has also pointed to the politicization of the platform before, and recently tweeted that any social media platform’s policies “are good if the most extreme 10 percent on left and right are equally unhappy.”

Who uses the platform and how. Before Mr. Musk offered to buy Twitter this month, he expressed concern about the relevance of the platform.

When an account posted a list of the 10 most followed Twitter accounts, including former President Barack Obama and the pop stars Justin Bieber and Katy Perry, Mr. Musk responded and wrote: “Most of these ‘top’ accounts tweet rarely and post very little content. Is Twitter dying?”

More recently, the Tesla chief executive promised in a tweet Thursday that he would “defeat the spam bots or die trying!”

Even as negotiations for his multibillion takeover of Twitter approached their final stages this weekend, Elon Musk took a shot at fellow billionaire Bill Gates in a series of high-profile tweets. The messages were a reflection of Mr. Musk’s freewheeling style on the social network, where he has more than 80 million followers, mixing serious messages and more sophomoric material.

Mr. Musk said Mr. Gates had taken a short position in Tesla’s stock, betting that it would fall. Mr. Musk was responding to a tweet that included screenshots of texts he apparently exchanged with Mr. Gates about potential philanthropic projects. Minutes later, he mocked Mr. Gates’s physical appearance in a tweet that got 1.1 million “likes.”

On Sunday, before a pivotal meeting between him and Twitter’s board, Mr. Musk tweeted that he was “moving on” from “making fun of Gates for shorting Tesla while claiming to support climate change action.”

The DealBook newsletter notes that the tweets may be a glimpse at how Twitter would run under Mr. Musk’s ownership. Critics say they were just the latest example of Mr. Musk using the platform, and his enormous following on it, as a bully pulpit, whether directed at billionaires or others.

Mr. Musk has said he wants Twitter to fulfill its “societal imperative” as a platform for free speech. But as DealBook has reported, that raises questions about what might happen to Twitter under his watch, given the tone he is setting and the problems that plagued the network’s previous chief executive, Jack Dorsey, before he embraced a more rules-based approach to content moderation.

Mr. Dorsey had said that he “didn’t fully predict or understand the real-world negative consequences” of a more unfettered service. To what extent did Twitter’s board weigh the potential for more “real-world negative consequences” against the money put forward by Musk?

The launch of Truth Social, former President Donald J. Trump’s social media project, has been marred by outages, long wait lists and underwhelming enthusiasm from users.Credit…Dado Ruvic/Reuters

Truth Social is slow and clunky. Its audience participation remains low. Two top executives have left. And the merger that could bring $1.3 billion in desperately needed cash to former President Donald J. Trump’s social media project seems far from completion.

And that was before Elon Musk entered the picture, The Times’s Matthew Goldstein, Kenneth P. Vogel and Ryan Mac report.

Mr. Musk’s potential acquisition of Twitter is the latest challenge for Trump Media & Technology Group’s flagship Truth Social app, which Mr. Trump has positioned as Twitter’s freewheeling conservative counterpart. Truth Social, which is available only for Apple devices, has 1.3 million installs, Sensor Tower, an app insights company, estimated. By comparison, Twitter has more than 200 million active users.

Mr. Musk was getting closer to a deal with Twitter Monday morning after announcing that he had lined up $46.5 billion in financing for his takeover bid. In recent weeks, Mr. Musk has said he would loosen the Twitter moderation policies that he has chafed under — and that famously led the service to bar Mr. Trump for inciting violence over the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Although Mr. Musk has not said if he would allow Mr. Trump to return to the platform if his bid succeeded, his ideas for easing Twitter’s rules would further sap the appeal of Mr. Trump’s beleaguered start-up as it faces a regulatory investigation that could decide its future.

Trump Media declined to comment on Mr. Musk’s Twitter bid. Liz Harrington, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, pointed to a recent interview with Americano Media in which the former president said he “probably wouldn’t rejoin Twitter if he could.”

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On April 4, Elon Musk revealed that he had purchased a sizable stake in Twitter. Three weeks later, Mr. Musk and Twitter are nearing a deal for the billionaire to acquire the social media company entirely and take it private.

Here are highlights of our coverage of the twists and turns in this saga:

Elon Musk Becomes Twitter’s Largest Shareholder (April 4): The Tesla chief executive, who has been critical of Twitter’s content moderation policies, has bought 9.2 percent of the social media company.

Elon Musk Joins Twitter’s Board, Pitching Ideas Big and Small (April 5): Free speech, open-source algorithms — and an edit button: The world’s richest person will soon help steer the social media platform where he has a huge following.

Elon Musk Will Not Join Twitter’s Board, Company Says (April 10): The announcement reverses a decision made days earlier. By not joining Twitter’s board, Mr. Musk will also no longer be bound by a previous agreement he had signed with the company.

Twitter Counters a Musk Takeover With a Time-Tested Barrier (April 15): With a “poison pill” defense, Twitter seems intent on fending off the billionaire’s bid to buy it.

Elon Musk Races to Secure Financing for Twitter Bid (April 19): Mr. Musk is trying to shore up debt financing, including potentially taking out a loan against his shares of Tesla.

Elon Musk Details Plan for $46.5 Billion Twitter Takeover (April 21): The financial commitments from a group of banks put pressure on the social media company’s board to take his advances seriously.

Twitter in Advanced Talks to Sell Itself to Elon Musk (April 24): The company’s 11-member board held negotiations with Mr. Musk over his offer to buy the social networking service.