Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk to join Twitter board after investing $2.9 billion in the platform

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been chosen for Twitter’s board of directors, just one day after it was confirmed that he is the social media platform’s largest shareholder, holding a 9.2 per cent stake.

On April 5, Twitter’s CEO Parag Agrawal said he was excited to announce Musk’s membership to the company’s board of directors. 

Looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2022

Tesla’s CEO, whose personal wealth is assessed to be $289 billion, about $100 billion greater than the second richest person on the planet, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has a history of publishing controversial tweets.

Musk was a “passionate believer and intense critic” of the platform, according to Agrawal, and it was exactly what Twitter needed to render it stronger in the long run.

Surprisingly, Musk has a Twitter following of more than 80 million, and he was already looking forward to collaborating with the company “to make big improvements” to the social media platform in the near future.

Twitter on Tuesday stated that Musk had agreed to serve as a class two director with a term terminating at the company’s annual meeting of shareholders in 2024.

Musk bought a nearly $3 billion (£2.3 billion) share in Twitter on Monday, which is more than four times the 2.25 per cent share held by the platform’s co-founder, Jack Dorsey.

However, Musk would not be able to own more than 14.9 per cent of Twitter’s outstanding shares, either alone or as part of a group, for as long as he was a board member and for 90 days later, according to the firm.

The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, who ranks among the Top 10 most popular users on Twitter with 80.4 million followers, paid $2.89 billion for the stake on Friday at Twitter’s closing share price.

Twitter shares rose another 5 per cent Tuesday morning after soaring more than 27 per cent on Monday after reports of Musk’s stock purchase.