Elon Musk breaks silence on Twitter purchase and offers vision of platform’s future

Elon Musk has broken his silence on his proposed $44bn purchase of Twitter and offered a vision of the social media platform’s future under his ownership.

The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO tweeted on Tuesday to say that obtaining Twitter was the first step in creating a new “X” app, similar to China’s WeChat.

“Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app,” tweeted Mr Musk, hours after it emerged he had sent a letter to the Twitter board offering to go through with his purchase rather than fight them in court later this month.

Mr Musk has spent the last few months trying to back out of his deal for Twitter, claiming that the platform’s leaders had not been honest with him about the number of bot and spam accounts.

In return, he was sued by Twitter and faced being deposed ahead of going before a judge in Delaware in several weeks. Experts had predicted that the world’s richest man would have had a difficult time winning his case based on the discovery that has been made public.

Mr Musk made the offer of $54.20 a share in a letter to Twitter filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

Twitter confirmed that it had received Mr Musk’s renewed offer.

“We received the letter from the Musk parties which they have filed with the SEC,” a spokesperson said. “The intention of the company is to close the transaction at 54.20 dollars per share.”

Twitter shares had jumped by 22 per cent by the end of trading in the US on Tuesday.

During a June meeting with Twitter employees, Mr Musk praised WeChat, the most popular app in China as he laid out his idea for the company.

“Think of it like WeChat in China, which is great now, but there’s no WeChat equivalent outside of China,” Mr Musk said when asked why he wanted to buy Twitter. “There’s a real opportunity to create that.”

And he added: “You basically live on WeChat in China because it’s so helpful, so useful to daily life. I think if we achieve that or come even close to that with Twitter, that would be a success.”

WeChat has more than one billion monthly users and combines social media, instant messaging and mobile payment in one app.