Elon Musk buys almost 10% stake in Twitter for $3bn

Tesla owner Elon Musk has bought a 9.2% stake in Twitter worth almost $3bn (£2.29bn), a regulatory filing showed on Monday, potentially making him the biggest stakeholder in the micro-blogging site.

The news sent Twitter's shares soaring by about 25% in premarket trading.

The stake is worth $2.89bn (£2.20bn) based on the share price of Twitter at closing time on Friday and equates to roughly 73.5 million shares.

Musk is an active Twitter user and has over 80 million followers, one of the highest on the site.

He uses the platform to give updates about Tesla's performance but he also regularly tweets memes and sometimes controversial opinions.

He has spoken in the past about his disagreements with the platform's stance on deleting tweets and deactivating accounts claiming it infringes free speech.

He has also pondered setting up his own social media company to deal with these issues.

Musk is the world's richest person worth an estimated $287.6bn (£219.5bn) according to Forbes.

His wealth is almost entirely down to the massive surge in stock price Tesla has experienced in recent years making it the world's most valuable car company and putting him securely ahead of Jeff Bezos who is worth an estimated $189.3bn (£1.55bn).

Musk has repeatedly landed himself in hot water for speaking his mind openly on Twitter. He famously criticised British caver, Vernon Unsworth, who was involved in the rescue of a group of boys from a cave in Thailand in 2018.

He was eventually cleared of defaming Unsworth after a lengthy and public legal battle in 2019.

Musk has also landed himself in trouble for tweeting giant suggestions about changing his companies, which has infuriated some investors and US regulators.

In March this year US securities regulators said they have legal authority to subpoena Tesla and Musk about his tweets, and that Musk’s move to throw out a 2018 court agreement that his tweets be pre-approved is not valid.The Securities and Exchange Commission also disclosed publicly it is investigating Musk’s tweets from last year that asked followers whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stake.Musk was also accused of fraud by regulators in 2018 when he tweeted a suggestion that he would take Tesla off the stock market and make it a private company, causing panic among investors.

Shares of other social media firms, including Meta (Facebook) and Snapchat were also trading higher after the announcement of Musk's investment.