Elon Musk has officially bought Twitter for $44bn

After plenty of deliberation, Twitter has announced in a press release that it has entered a “definitive agreement to be acquired” by Elon Musk in a deal valued at $44 billion.

In a takeover that sees Twitter’s shareholders being bought out at a price of $54.20 a share in an all-cash transaction, Tesla CEO Elon Musk now has total control over Twitter and its future business decisions.

Throughout the leadup to this monumental, and somewhat hostile,  takeover Musk has positioned himself as an ambassador for free speech, stating that Twitter has the potential “to be the platform for free speech around the globe,” something he believes is a “societal imperative for a functioning democracy.”

In the announcement of this buyout, Elon Musk renewed this commitment to free speech, stating that “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 spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it,” Musk continued.

???? Yesss!!! ???? pic.twitter.com/0T9HzUHuh6

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022

Before acquiring Twitter for himself, Elon Musk successfully campaigned for Twitter to implement an edit button for tweets, allowing users to finally make corrections rather than deleting and remaking a tweet. 

After purchasing 9.2% of Twitter earlier this month, Elon Musk leveraged his position to accelerate the development of the edit button feature, which is soon to be heading to the company’s paid Twitter Blue subscribers. It is currently unclear if under Musk’s ownership the rollout of the feature will be accelerated even more.