Reuters: Tesla Inc chief executive officer Elon Musk has built a 9.2% stake in Twitter Inc, a regulatory filing showed on Monday, sending the micro-blogging site's shares soaring in premarket trading.
Shares of other social media firms, including Meta Platforms and Snapchat owner Snap Inc, were also trading higher.
Musk owns 73.5 million Twitter shares, valuing his passive stake in the company at up to $2.9 billion (about R43 bn) based on the stock's Friday close. The shares are held by the Elon Musk Revocable Trust.
Musk, a prolific user of Twitter, has more than 80 million followers on the site since joining in 2009 and has used the platform to make several announcements, including teasing a go-private deal for Tesla that landed him in regulatory scrutiny.
He, however, has been critical of the social media platform and its policies of late and has said the company is undermining democracy by failing to adhere to free speech principles.
Meanwhile, Musk and Twitter's billionaire co-founder, Jack Dorsey, have had some common ground in terms of dismissing the so-called Web3, a vague term for a utopian version of the internet that is decentralised.
Late March, the silicon valley billionaire said he was giving "serious thought" to building a new social media platform.
Musk was responding to a Twitter user's question on whether he would consider building a social media platform consisting of an open source algorithm and one that would prioritise free speech and where propaganda was minimal.
Musk, a prolific user of Twitter himself, has been critical of the social media platform and its policies of late. He has said the company is undermining democracy by failing to adhere to free speech principles.
Musk is a South African-born American entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment firm PayPal and formed SpaceX, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft.
He was also one of the first significant investors in, as well as chief executive officer of the electric car manufacturer Tesla.
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