Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk has agreed to move forward with his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter (TWTR), Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. The move comes days before Musk was expected to be deposed as part of Twitter’s lawsuit seeking to force the Tesla CEO to buy the company.
Musk initially agreed to buy Twitter in April for $54.20 per share, which works out to $44 billion. He then said he was pulling out of the deal, claiming that Twitter wasn’t providing enough information about the number of bots it had on the platform. Twitter struck back against Musk in July, filing a lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court with the hopes that Musk would be forced to buy the company.
Shares of Twitter surged on the news, rising more than 12.7% before being halted for volatility.
In its lawsuit, Twitter said that Musk’s purported concern about bots was just a pretext for backing out of the deal as the stock market started to turn sour. Indeed, Musk had expressed concern over the bots issue long before backing out of the deal, according to text messages that became public last week as part of Twitter’s lawsuit.
Fake accounts, also known as bots, can spread misinformation and scare off advertisers, who want to sell ads to real people. Musk told a Twitter board member back in April — before he agreed to buy Twitter — that “drastic” action was necessary to tackle bots, according to the newly released text messages.
“This is hard to do as a public company, as purging fake users will make the numbers look terrible, so restructuring should be done as a private company,” he said.
“This is Jack’s opinion too,” Musk said, referring to Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey.
We reached out to Twitter and lawyers for Musk for confirmation of his interest in buying Twitter and did not receive an immediate response.
Additional reporting by Alexis Keenan.
Got a tip? Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@yahoofinance.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.
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