On Monday, Twitter accepted Elon Musk’s bid to buy the company, after eleven days of pushbacks.
The $44 billion deal will enable the world’s richest man to take the company private and possibly implement changes that will guarantee “free speech.”
He also aims to deactivate bot accounts and “authenticate all real humans.”
If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 21, 2022
Twitter shares climbed 5.7% Monday after the social-media company accepted Elon Musk’s bid, to close at $51.70.
It’s the company’s highest closing value in about five months.
This seems to be the effect Mr. Musk has had on the companies he has taken over in time past
Zip2
Elon Musk started his earliest known business at the age of 24 when he teamed up with his brother and another partner to found Global Link Information Network.
The company later became known as Zip2.
It initially provided internet access to local businesses before it began assisting newspapers in designing online city guides.
It was purchased by Compaq Computer in 1999 for $305 million.
The then 27-year-old Musk made $22 million from the deal.
X.com
Mr. Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and email payment company, in the year that Zip2 was sold.
It merged with the software company, Confinity two years later and was renamed PayPal.
On 3 October 2002, PayPal was purchased by eBay for $1.5 billion.
Musk’s 11.7% majority shareholding at the time fetched him $175.5 million.
SpaceX
He used the proceeds from the sale of PayPal to fund investments such as SpaceX, a space exploration company.
The private company is presently valued at about $100 billion and has won contracts with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
He serves as its CEO and lead designer.
Tesla
Mr. Musk is best known for Tesla, although he is not one of the electric vehicle maker’s founders.
He joined as a first-round investor in 2004, a year after it was founded by Martin Eberhard and Mark Tarpennning.
He went from being a board member of Tesla to its CEO, even while still serving as the CEO of SpaceX.
He is credited with making electric motor vehicles (EMV) go mainstream.
Tesla launched its initial public offering (IPO) at $17 per share on 28 June 2010.
As of 26 April 2022, shares of Tesla traded for more than $998.
Mr. Musk’s stake is worth around $170 billion.
The Boring Company
The futurist founded The Boring Company in 2017 on the premise that above-ground traffic challenges can be solved by building underground tunnels
The company’s goal is to reduce the cost of tunneling while also making production more efficient.
In March 2019, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority approved a $48.6 million proposal from the company to build an underground tunnel (LVCC Loop) that would feature three stations and a pedestrian tunnel.
Neuralink
Mr. Musk co-founded a neurotechnology company, Neuralink in 2016.
It is a developer of implantable brain-machine interfaces which wants to make devices to treat brain diseases.
It also has a long-term goal of “human enhancement.”
