The deal was shaken upon on Monday after weeks of speculation about the social media giant’s future following Musk’s emergence as the platform’s largest single shareholder on 4 April. Ten days later, Musk then declared a takeover bid, offering $54.20 per Twitter share. 

Initially, Twitter’s board appeared to be against the takeover and introduced a “poison pill” in a bid to block the sale. However, they warmed to the idea after Musk announced a funding package for the deal, which includes $21 billion of his own wealth as well as debt funding from Morgan Stanley.

In the past, Musk has criticised Twitter, claiming it does not allow free speech. In a tweet that followed confirmation of the deal being accepted, Musk wrote, “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 [...] 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 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.”