The world’s richest man, Elon Musk has bought up Twitter in a $44 billion (£34.6 billion) takeover, saying he plans to “unlock” the potential of the social media giant.
Musk is worth an estimated fortune of $269billion.
A couple of hours before the deal was reached he posted online: “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter because that is what free speech means.”
Twitter and Musk negotiated into the early hours of yesterday over his bid to buy the social media platform, less than two weeks after the billionaire first revealed a massive stake.
In a statement after the announcement, Musk said, “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 the sspambots,,, and authenticating all humans.”
“Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
